A marriage story disguised as a spy caper, Steven Soderbergh’s latest Black Bag stars Michael Fassbender and Cate Blanchett as the partners at the center of this outstanding potboiler. They play George and Kathryn, respectively, both intelligence officers working for the same British organization, who use the phrase “black bag” like a safe word when skirting around confidential intel with one another. George’s boss Meacham (Gustaf Skarsgård) asks him to investigate the leak of a dangerous software program named Severus and gives him a list of potential suspects within their agency. They include satellite imagery specialist Clarissa (Marisa Abela), her boyfriend Freddie (Tom Burke), psychiatrist Zoe (Naomie Harris), and her boyfriend James (Regé-Jean Page). The fifth name on the list, as it should happen, is Kathryn.
Like NEON did with Soderbergh’s Presence a couple months ago, Focus Features is pitching Black Bag as something a bit different than what it actually turns out to be. The ads make it seem like more of an action-packed affair along the lines of a James Bond movie; incidentally, two alumni from that franchise (Harris and Pierce Brosnan in a small role) also appear here. Instead, its story is driven not just on dialogue but the tone and inflection of how the characters, all trained in espionage, carefully deliver their words. Serving as screenwriter for a third time with Soderbergh after Kimi and Presence, David Koepp loads his script with tense exchanges and spy lingo, along with bits of droll humor, to make this tricky, duplicitous world seem plausible.
Even the most adroit script could fall flat with pedestrian storytelling but with Soderbergh working, as he’s often done, as director, cinematographer and editor, Black Bag is quietly riveting. A dinner scene with six guests could absolutely be a ho-hum volley of shot-reverse shot interactions but without getting too ostentatious, Soderbergh finds perfect angles around the corners of the table to pique our interest. George suggests they play a game where each person effectively speaks on behalf of the person sitting to their right and the pacing and composition of the shots turns this normal-seeming party game into something much higher stakes. As with many of his projects, Soderbergh uses natural room lighting here and the globe lights on the table provide enough coverage on each of the characters’ faces but also emit a gauzy halo that smears the frame the way these suspects fudge their facts.
While George is undoubtedly Black Bag‘s central character as the paranoid interrogator, the film gives ample time for each of the main players in the exceptional ensemble cast to shine. The standout for me is Marisa Abela, playing an analyst who is still trying to prove herself early in her career but who also demonstrates she’s more than capable in the art of deception. Following up his role as a war-ready tanker driver in last year’s Furiosa, Tom Burke is back to playing the more conniving and cunning roles that helped him break out in The Souvenir and Mank. Regé-Jean Page and Naomie Harris play things cool and sharp-tongued while still allowing for spots of vulnerability to shine through. Every one of them is impeccably dressed and, yes, everyone in this movie is, to quote Zoolander, “ridiculously good looking”.
Black Bag is certainly a riveting whodunit within this cloak-and-dagger world but I especially appreciated the level of domestic drama Soderbergh and Koepp infuse in this movie. Cate Blanchett and Michael Fassbender also flesh out their characters beautifully, both coming across as unreadable and enigmatic at the outset but slowly revealing the emotional concentric circles that would cause the two to fall for one another. It also helps that the two actors, some of the best we have, possess dynamite chemistry with one another. With almost 40 films under his belt at this point in his incredible career, Steven Soderbergh is simply one of the most exciting filmmakers around and Black Bag is yet another example of how there’s no genre he can’t enliven.
Score – 4/5
New movies coming to theaters this weekend:
Snow White, a live-action Disney remake starring Rachel Zegler and Gal Gadot, retells the story of a princess who joins forces with seven dwarfs to liberate her kingdom from her cruel stepmother The Evil Queen.
The Alto Knights, a biopic starring Robert De Niro and Debra Messing, involves a pair of legendary mob bosses — Vito Genovese and Frank Costello — who were rivals for control of a major crime family in the mid-20th century.
Ash, a sci-fi horror thriller starring Eiza González and Aaron Paul, follows an astronaut as she wakes up to find that the entire crew of her space station has been killed and sets course for a nearby planet to find answers.