Despite a handful of studio-pleasing achievements to his name (the worldwide box office success of the Ocean’s trilogy, the Oscars accrued by Erin Brockovich and Traffic, the soon-to-be-Vegas-ed Magic Mike franchise), Steven Soderbergh is something of a restless spirit in Hollywood.
He’s made a concerted effort to resist becoming a handsomely rewarded hired hand, avoiding pre-crafted blockbusters and crafting an idiosyncratic route of his own. His last film Logan Lucky was a potential game-changer: a film produced and controlled entirely with his own money without studio interference. The gamble didn’t exactly pay off (it grossed $2m less than its budget in the US) but he’s following it up with another unusual proposition: an interactive murder mystery that viewers have been able to navigate via an app for the last two months. It now arrives fully formed as a six-part HBO series, for better or worse.
Olivia Lake (Sharon Stone) is a successful children’s author and illustrator living a luxurious yet lonely life in the snowy town of Summit, Utah. When she encounters handsome struggling artist Joel (Garrett Hedlund), it appears as if things might be looking up and she agrees to rent him out space in her extravagant home, hoping their friendship might blossom into something else. Simultaneously, she also meets Eric (Frederick Weller), a charming stranger who, unbeknownst to her, is a con artist hired by a neighbor to help force her to sell the property. But within weeks of meeting both men, Olivia is murdered.
For small-screen crime obsessives tiring of a familiar format or perhaps gamers accustomed to a more expansive and controllable form of storytelling, the Mosaic app offered something undeniably attractive, akin to a hi-tech spin on Choose Your Own Adventure. But compacted into a more easily digestible format, without the ability to customize one’s own experience, is Mosaic a mystery worth solving?
Yes and no.
Soderbergh’s last foray in the thriller genre was 2013’s wildly entertaining Side Effects, an intricately plotted and exceptionally performed piece of Hitchcockian pulp. The high bar isn’t quite met here although, as with most of Soderbergh’s work, it’s rarely less than watchable.
There’s a compelling engine at work that drives the plot from initial intrigue to the sprawling fallout from a grisly murder and the truth is kept at a tantalizing distance. But there are issues with the format. First, it’s under the HBO Movies banner rather than being defined as an original series and the structure does feel more cinematic yet with six hours’ worth of story to tell and with most episodes concluding without any clear cliffhanger or even shocking plot point, it feels like an awkward fit.
There’s also the unavoidable problem with the show’s inception. Too often it all feels like an exercise, a story created to fit within the framework of a tech gimmick, an intriguing gimmick for sure, but a gimmick nonetheless. Would this story have felt worthy of a six-hour HBO movie/series otherwise? Probably not. Soderbergh’s oft-used choice to eschew gloss for dry, sometimes cold, sometimes mundane realism, gives an undeserved elevation to the material here which is familiarly lurid. He gives it the feel of something far more serious, more grounded and at times, it feels that a more unapologetically trashy tone would have been a better fit. Do we really want to see scenes of a wine-sipping Sharon Stone scoping out hotties with her campy best friend, played by Paul Reubens (!), delivered with the flat, low-key direction of a social drama?
The small-screen crime boom has also made us pickier armchair detectives and too much of Mosaic borders on pedestrian. The aftershocks of a small-town murder have led to far more imaginative thrillers in recent years (from The Killing to Broadchurch) and there’s not enough of a labyrinthine plot here to sustain six episodes. It feels like there’s probably a more entertaining two-hour film that could be assembled from the impressive raw materials. Speaking of which, there’s a charismatic yet vulnerable turn from Stone, a performance from Hedlund that serves as another reminder that he’s worthy of leading man status and some light but effective social commentary.
Soderbergh’s lust for innovation should be applauded (his next project is a horror film made on an iPhone) and it’s encouraging to see a longtime film-maker refuse to fall into a rut. Mosaic is undeniably a mixed proposition but ultimately feels like a worthy folly nonetheless. You can play with it or just watch it and there are pleasures to be gained either way. It’s best seen as a work in progress, a tease of a future that’s to come and one that Soderbergh will most definitely be spearheading.
- Mosaic begins on HBO on 22 January and in the UK on Sky Atlantic at a later date
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