What the heck is COMMAND Z? It’s director Steven Soderbergh’s plea to “Do Something.” Since exposing the corporate greed and social irresponsibility of Pacific Gas and Electric in Erin Brockovich (2000) and poking holes in the US government’s politicized “war on drugs” in Traffic (2000), Soderbergh’s career has been quietly focused on telling stories about broken systems and exploitative industries: Price-fixing in the corn industry, the misuse of psychopharmaceuticals, tax evasion among the super-rich, the ties between the government and the automobile industry, and data gathering by smart devices, to name a few. In each case, the film isn’t a call to action; he doesn’t sacrifice his narrative for an activist message but allows the viewer to come to the same conclusion as his protagonists—that those with the means should fix these broken systems. COMMAND Z is perhaps Soderbergh’s most palpable message movie, adopting a mind-bending science-fiction setup to get people to think about the future, which our society seems to avoid doing at a great cost.

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