“Full Circle” thoughts, Episode One: “Something Different”

The Road Warriors never stayed put. Considered one of the greatest tag teams in the history of professional wrestling, the two muscled-and-mohawked behemoths known as Hawk and Animal brought their Mad Max–indebted brand of post-apocalyptic style and mayhem to wrestling promotions across the country and around the world, never staying in one place for very long. They’d dip in, wreck shop, and bounce. It made them superstars.

At the risk of being the first person in human history to compare Steven Soderbergh to a couple of gargantuan ex-bouncers who entered the ring wearing spiked shoulder pads while blasting Black Sabbath’s “Iron Man,” the director’s career reminds me of theirs quite a bit. Bouncing from genre to genre, style to style, tone to tone, and in this particular case film to television — a medium he visits every few years, directing the shit out some show or other before departing for the movies once again — he’s a journeyman filmmaker in the very literal sense that his filmography is a journey across one boundary after the next. 

Soderbergh’s latest trip to the small/streaming screen, Full Circle, is a reunion with his frequent collaborator, comedy-turned-crime screenwriter Ed Solomon. And based on its trickily plotted, emotionally earnest first episode…well, go ahead and cue up “Iron Man.”

I’m covering Steven Soderbergh and Ed Solomon’s quintessential Gripping New Thriller Full Circle for Decider, starting with my review of the series premiere.

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