Unlike the Miami transit service that gives the film its title and gets from first to final stop in just 16 minutes,takes time to wade through its tangled thicket of set-up and draw you in. But Bernardo Britto’s near-future sci-fi — about death, time travel and the cherished gifts in life we take for granted while pursuing that elusive something more — sneaks up on you.
But Zoya, whose numbness bordering on annoyance slowly starts to make sense, knows every detail of what’s to come — the reluctant meeting with her publisher over a modern physics textbook; the updating of her will; the visit to her nonverbal, cognitively impaired mother in a care home; even the conversation on a garden bench with another resident and the exact moment a bird in the tree above will drop a splat between them.
Given that the time loop exists only for Zoya, that means having to start from scratch every day, convincing Paula over and over that she’s not a nutjob. Edebiri conveys the initial skepticism of each new beginning with low-key humor, but she gives the character a driving curiosity and open-mindedness that make her willingness to dive into Zoya’s research fully plausible.