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.