‘Black Bag’ Review: Sex, Spies, and Videotape [B+]
Early in Black Bag, Steven Soderbergh’s taut new espionage thriller doubling as a domestic and workplace romance, intelligence officer George Woodhouse (Michael Fassbender) finds a ticket stub in his wife Kathryn St. Jean’s (Cate Blanchett) wastebasket near her vanity. Apparently, Kathryn went to the cinema without him and didn’t tell him–perhaps the worst thing you can do to your partner. This is the style of humor found at the center of Black Bag, a smart, stylish film that finds Soderbergh in his sweet spot. It’s challenging to think of another modern auteur as interested in and well-equipped to tackle the intersection of changing technological trends, the power of movie stars, and the moral complexities of adults in difficult relationships as Soderbergh and Black Bag allows him to do just that.
Black Bag begins on a Friday night in London, with the camera following closely behind George as he enters a club. Once inside, he quickly finds Mr. Meacham (Gustaf Skarsgård), who hands him a list of five names–all possible options for a traitor inside his workplace, Britain’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC). One of these individuals has taken Severus, a biological weapon capable of killing thousands. The complication? Kathryn is on the list. Fassbender’s George Woodhouse notably references English spies of the past (Michael Caine’s Harry Palmer) while incorporating what has become a trademark for the actor: a precise, almost inhuman quality. George speaks with a posh, sophisticated tone and even evokes David in Prometheus and his character in The Killer. Everything he does is specific and deliberate, down to his preparation of the Sunday Roast. As the weekend comes to a close, he’s taken great care in preparing a meal for Kathryn and their four guests. Naturally, it’s a set up so that he can suss out the actions of the potential traitors all at once. It’s been a while since they’ve had a mole in the house.
Soderbergh introduces us to Kathryn through George’s eagle eyes. He’s watching her get ready for dinner, and while her eyes don’t meet his, it’s clear that she knows he’s watching and she enjoys it. As a fellow agent at NCSC, there is something romantic for the pair about bringing their work home with them, about it infiltrating their day-to-day. Blanchett’s Kathryn, with her brunette wig and perfectly tailored ensembles, is a smooth operator, more reminiscent of James Bond than George could ever be. While George comes across as robotic and even sociopathic, Kathryn’s social savvy is her strength. Blanchett adds a layer of nuance to Kathryn, imbuing her with an unknowable frostiness that keeps George and everyone else on their toes. She would lie to him if she had to, and he knows it. Soderbergh has always had a knack for depicting complicated emotional bonds and smartly puts the audience in the same voyeuristic position as George, trying to figure out not only what Kathryn is up to but what their relationship signifies. They seem to genuinely love each other, but is that all just a performance and a ruse? Is she just testing him? Suddenly, the audience feels just as unmoored as George, even as we become privy to additional information.
Kathryn isn’t the only suspect, though, and Soderbergh pivots and shifts the perspective away from George to introduce the two pairs of potential traitors before they arrive at the Woodhouse-St. Jean residence. The couples are all colleagues of George and Kathryn and include the charming and self-destructive Freddie Smalls (The Souvenir’s Tom Burke) and his girlfriend, the impressionable spitfire Clarissa (Industry’s Marisa Abela); and the observant (mandated) company psychologist Dr. Zoe Vaughan (No Time To Die’s Naomie Harris), who recently began dating her patient, the gregarious Colonel James Stokes (Bridgerton’s Regé-Jean Page). The unique wrinkle in the world of the NCSC and Black Bag is that it’s advantageous and even encouraged to date your colleagues, as it theoretically keeps top secret information locked down. This concept is an ideal playground for a director like Soderbergh, who thrives in the moral grey with films that uncover deeper issues within the intricacies of the workplace (Erin Brockovich, The Informant!). These couples are together, yet don’t seem to trust each other very much, excusing deception as part of the job. If a difficult work issue (or even a personal one) comes up that’s off limits, they simply say, “black bag.” The phrase, a common saying at work and a cheeky safe word at home, perfectly captures the film’s fun, slippery tone.
As the three couples dine, screenwriter David Koepp (Mission: Impossible, Panic Room) turns the story into a cocktail of The Thin Man and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, with a little bit of The Traitors sprinkled in. George doesn’t want anyone to know his motivations, so he stages a table game that is so diabolical that it would make any of the Real Housewives jealous. As he asks each person to create a resolution for the person to their right, the evening devolves, exposing cracks and infidelities in each relationship with a little bit of tableside violence. George isn’t exactly squeaky-clean either, as it’s revealed that he once surveilled his father (a direct reference to John le Carré). He doesn’t really gain any useful information from the dinner aside from some details about their sex lives, but the fault lines are established, and he’s going to have to work on each of them individually. George knows that Kathryn has a short trip to Zurich scheduled and he’s going to use each of their weaknesses to find out why. After all, he did ask her why she was going, and she replied, “black bag.”
As the clock starts ticking over the following week, Soderbergh and Koepp focus on the process for each character, depicting revealing therapy sessions with Dr. Vaughan, a gripping and brilliantly edited polygraph test sequence with the group and, of course, the hierarchical nature of their daily work, led by the egotistical elder statesman Arthur Steiglitz (a perfect Pierce Brosnan). The uniqueness of Black Bag is that it’s far more interested in the confluence of collegial and romantic relationships than in creating the types of action-packed sequences often typical of spy thrillers. For Soderbergh and Koepp, the film’s intensity lies specifically within the group dynamics and the character work, and it doesn’t need to rely on action set pieces to keep you on your toes. Soderbergh doesn’t use the genre as a Trojan Horse for the story’s themes either, instead recognizing that deception and romance (and the sometimes forbidden nature of both) are core to the genre’s decades-long popularity. David Holmes’ excellent retro-inspired score feels like the perfect nod to the films of the 1960s and ‘70s before the genre took itself too seriously.
The stagey dialogue can sometimes feel like a Bond audition for the four supporting characters, but Abela’s burgeoning star power shines through. Fans of Industry will be familiar with her ability to tap into her character’s sexuality to navigate power in the male-dominated space, and here she plays with new shades of that, incorporating some of the film’s best comedic moments. A scene where Clarissa and George use surveillance equipment at her desk to spy on Kathryn in Zurich is a particular highlight and a perfect blend of the script’s smart dialogue and comedic bite. And while Kathryn and George’s marriage is tinged with romance and subtle eroticism, Abela’s presence is begging for a movie with the titanic sparks found in the trunk in Out of Sight.
At a tight ninety-three minutes, the specificities of the espionage plot can feel a bit underbaked and rushed by the film’s conclusion, but the dynamic between Fassbender and Blanchett at the center and their individual interactions with the supporting characters makes Black Bag worth watching. In many ways, it’s a warning to never marry someone within your field, someone who can relate to you and your work a little too much. And yet, it’s also an invitation to get even closer. Deception lies within all marriages. Why not make it romantic?
Grade: B+
Focus Features will release Black Bag only in theaters on March 14.
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