With “Full Circle,” Steven Soderbergh once again immerses us in a multi-character crime caper. Typical of the director’s work, it’s intricate, obsessed with money, cognizant of sociopolitical realities and astute about human nature (if not super illuminating). This six-episode Max limited series is on the more serious end of the Soderbergh spectrum, “Traffic”-like rather than an “Ocean’s” romp, mousetrap-plotted as opposed to experimental. The overall effect is one of the smart, showy filmmaker doing donuts, but spinning the wheels of a well-tuned Escalade.
Written by Ed Solomon, who also provided the scripts for Soderbergh’s earlier mystery projects “Mosaic” and “No Sudden Move,” “Circle” transfers the basic idea of Akira Kurosawa’s procedural “High and Low” to a contemporary New York City with a much denser population of key characters. A scheme to kidnap the son of a wealthy family gets royally and morally screwed up when the wrong boy is snatched. Haves and have-nots play one another as in the Japanese semi-classic, but Solomon and Soderbergh spin out dozens of new plot threads, most of which they tie together with impressive, though somewhat mechanical efficiency.
The roster here is not just diverse but packed with folks who have well-grounded motivations for every move they make, whether or not they really know what they’re doing. It’s a Creole-accented — the story’s main immigrant contingent is Guyanese — stew of dashed hopes, deceptions both decades-old and fresh-faked, and attempts to do the right thing by people who don’t have much aptitude for it.
The rich Manhattan family here runs a vaguely defined foodie empire figureheaded by “Chef Jeff” McCusker (A ponytailed Dennis Quaid doing a very sharp portrait of a lucky, high-rolling idiot; this guy needs his own sitcom). Before you start thinking of this as “Hot Sauce Succession,” note that Jeff’s daughter and son-in-law, Sam (Claire Danes, dialed back from “Fleishman Is in Trouble” but still a bundle of nerves) and Derek Browne (Timothy Olyphant, more vulnerable than he’ll appear in the “Justified” sequel later this month), are the actual serious people who run the operation. Sam and Derek’s teenage son Jared (Ethan Stoddard) is always losing iPhones and limited edition Nikes. He tells the skeptical parents it’s not his fault and we know that’s true; we’ve seen a homeless boy Jared’s age, Nicky (Lucian Zanes), steal the items and add them to a McCusker family shrine back at his squat.
For predictable reasons kept fuzzy until later chapters, Savitri Mahabir (CCH Pounder), the queen of the Queens Guyana mob, orders multiple layers of underlings to kidnap Jared and deliver him to a certain chalk circle at a specified late hour in Washington Square Park. For her, it’s an Obeah ritual to lift a perceived curse (and maybe get a little revenge for something McCuskers might have done long ago back home). To her assorted foot soldiers — front business operator Garmen Harry (Phaldut Sharma), ruthless strike team honcho Aked (“I’m a Virgo” star Jharrel Jerome), Xavier (Sheyi Cole) and Louis (Gerald Jones), two conflicted lads fresh of the boat from Georgetown — it’s a payday they’re going to get by hook or by crook, depending on if any of them live to see the money.
Meanwhile, Melody Harmony (yes, that’s her name, and she’s played by Zazie Beetz), a postal inspector with a history of “personal encroachment” on both suspects and former girlfriends, will do anything to bring down the Mahabir Gang. When she inserts her brash self into the Browne/McCusker non-case, Melody doesn’t just rattle the skeletons in the family’s closets but also those of her hated boss, Jim Gaffigan’s Manny Broward. Seems Manny knows Sam for some reason.
Circles always coming around as they do, especially in overdetermined scenarios, everyone here has a shady relationship or two with somebody they shouldn’t.
Beetz makes Mel hugely watchable through sheer force of will. Melody appears to have many different facets and dimensions but she’s a TV construct, mainly there to move the plot along. Most of the characters are similarly distinguished by quick-sketch attributes: guilty absent parent, resentful divorced dad, henpecked family man with a machete in his closet — are credible and amusing but don’t add up to complex individuals. Reflective of that, what went down all those years ago in Guyana and led to this long-game revenge fiasco says nothing particularly astute about the Global North’s exploitation of the South, nor the corruption it generates in either type of society. See Soderbergh’s “The Laundromat” for a deeper dive into that.
What “Full Circle” does very well is immerse us in the compromises and desperation faced by the undocumented, who here include Louis’ sister Natalia, powerfully yet poignantly played by “The Midnight Club” standout Adia. They may be victims who do terrible things to get along, but the siblings and Xavier display a knack for situational ethics their better-off acquaintances could never access. The series’ underlying concerns are love and trust, and while those play out fine at each of the show’s well-delineated financial levels, it’s these least privileged pawns of the international economics game who put the most heart and sweat into holding onto humanity.
For Soderbergh, this is yet another, socially conscious thriller to add to the big auteur pile that includes everything from “The Knick” to “The Informant!” If the individual components of that body of work are starting to feel a bit pro forma, that may just be the price of continuing to do business.
“Full Circle” premieres Thursday, July 13, on Max.
