Steven Soderbergh Comes Back Around to TV With Efficient Crime Yarn ‘Full Circle’: TV Review

variety.com:

Alison Herman TV Critic Since his “retirement” from filmmaking in 2013, director Steven Soderbergh has never fully backed away from the world of features: He has eight movies to his name in the past decade — more than some of his peers have produced in their entire careers.

But Soderbergh did subsequently branch out into the world of TV, a medium he’s approached with the same enterprising, experimental spirit as he does his latter-period films.

First came 2014’s “The Knick,” the Cinemax period medical drama helmed entirely by Soderbergh at a time when marquee directors were just starting to dabble in TV; then “Mosaic,” a project released in 2017 as both an interactive app and an HBO series, showing the same interest in new technology that’s led Soderbergh to shoot multiple movies on an iPhone. “Mosaic” was a collaboration with screenwriter Ed Solomon (“Men in Black,” “Now You See Me”), who also penned Soderbergh’s 1950s noir “No Sudden Move.” The new Max miniseries “Full Circle” rounds out the Soderbergh-Solomon partnership into a trifecta of stripped-down, workmanlike crime yarns. “Full Circle” is the story of a sensational New York case that reveals the city’s connections across race and class, a synopsis that instantly groups it with narratives like “Bonfire of the Vanities,” “Lush Life” and “City on Fire,” the sprawling epic adapted for Apple TV+ this spring.

To this familiar scaffolding, “Full Circle” grafts a starry ensemble cast and effectively tense set-pieces, occasionally elevating though never fully transcending its faithful take on the genre.