'The Circle' isn't half bad, but it's only half good

"The Circle," a technological thriller starring Emma Watson and Tom Hanks, didn't screen for critics, usually a sign of fatally damaged goods. But the movie, an adaptation of a 2013 Dave Eggers novel about a young woman coming to terms with privacy, ethics and humanity while working at a Facebook-like company, isn't half bad. Directed by James Ponsoldt, who brought such atmospheric authenticity to the films "Smashed," "The Spectacular Now" and "The End of the Tour," from a script he co-wrote with Eggers, "The Circle" starts out with promise, as Watson's character, Mae, leaves a dead-end customer service job with a Bay Area water company to work for Eamon Bailey (Hanks), the bearded, laid-back, effortlessly charismatic leader of a many-tentacled tech behemoth called The Circle.

At first, Mae is dutifully dazzled by all the Circle has to offer: Pétanque on the lawn! Beck at the company bash! Hot and cold running yoga! And when Bailey announces, at the company's weekly "Dream Friday" event, a new spherical camera that can be planted anywhere to capture anything and anyone at any time, she's inspired by his pitch that it will bring tyrants and terrorists to heel.

But soon, Bailey's scheme is involving Mae in personal ways that have devastating results, developments that sadly make "The Circle" more overworked and plotty and less convincing as the story plays out. There are tantalizing morsels of nascent satire throughout the movie, including a staccato interview scene in which a human resources exec played by Nate Corddry peppers Mae with a series of which-is-better questions (she's for early Paul, late John). The penny drops when he barks "Needs of society or the needs of the individual?" and she replies, "I think they should be the same."

During another funny-creepy sequence, two colleagues browbeat Mae - who has the tune of "Simple Gifts" as her ringtone - to up her social media usage, so that her data can be shared throughout the Circle campus. (They launch the words "community" and "connection" with ballistic force.) While she becomes increasingly popular within the cultish company, her down-to-earth parents (Glenne Headly and the late Bill Paxton, in a wincingly realistic performance) and childhood friend Mercer (Ellar Coltrane) are keeping it real, adamantly sticking to analog values of home, hearth, nature and old-fashioned eye contact.

"The Circle" couldn't be more timely, as Facebook grapples with murders performed live on its platform, the U.S. Congress seeks to gut privacy protections for Internet users, and ideals of transparency and accountability curdle into the far darker norms of surveillance capitalism. But that's also made the film seem strangely out of step with times that seem to be outrunning it every day. It feels both prescient and dated; realistic and outlandish; fresh and hopelessly derivative of everything from "The Truman Show" to the superb Netflix series "Dark Mirror."

Although Watson does a sturdy job of holding the screen for much of "The Circle's" running time, Hanks is woefully underused. What the viewer thinks might be a battle of the wills between their two characters instead becomes a convenient set of schematic, perfunctory encounters. Patton Oswalt and John Boyega are similarly wasted in roles that feel thin and, in Boyega's case, painfully forced. (Among the supporting players, the Scottish actress Karen Gillan does a particularly good job as Mae's friend Annie, going from on-fleek knowledge worker to strung-out corporate drone with impressive credibility.) Despite its relevance, flashes of insight and welcome portrayal of a female protagonist unencumbered by the usual romantic-sexual tensions with her male peers, "The Circle" can't help but be a disappointment, given its provenance and potential. It may not be half bad, but that also means it's only half good.