Universal Studios
The fact that Black Bag is excellent should come as no real surprise: Steven Soderbergh is one of our best filmmakers, David Koepp writing about spies is a no brainer, and the cast is first-rate.
Still, I was shocked at just how eminently watchable, how perfectly paced, how stylish and fun this film turned out to be. Black Bag feels like a tribute to the work of John le Carre, but made specifically for the silver screen. It is a masterful thriller, a great detective story, and first class material for the cast to sink their teeth into.
Black Bag opens with a classic le Carre premise: SIS operative George Woodhouse (Michael Fassbender) is informed by his contact that a sensitive operation called ‘Severus’ has been put up for sale by an operative within the Service, that the traitor can only be one of five people, and that the suspect list includes his wife, Kathryn (Cate Blanchett).
Fassbender’s Magneto in X-Men: First Class had shades of Connery’s Bond in it, but here he feels like he’s channeling Sir Alec Guinness’ portrayal of George Smiley. He’s a somber, withdrawn observer of human behavior.
George invites the remaining suspects: trigger man James (Regé-Jean Page), satellite analyst Clarissa (Marisa Abela), staff psychologist Zoe (Naomie Harris) and middle manager Freddie (Tom Burke) to a dinner party as a pretext to observe them under duress but becomes concerned when further evidence seems to implicate Kathryn. Worse still, when George leverages Clarissa into observing a black bag meet-up that Kathryn is making with a government satellite he becomes the prime suspect in his handler, Stieglitz’s (Pierce Brosnan) investigation.
Black Bag is a mind game that uses espionage as a metaphor for the emotional landmines surrounding romantic relationships by intertwining a group of characters who are trained manipulators with uncertain loyalties. The film uses small details and throwaway lines that seem to be reflective of one set of secrets and in its solution reveals them to indicate complicity in another. These are characters for whom every utterance is guarded, every twitch could be a false flag.
It’s the combination of Soderbergh’s razor sharp editing and the cast of smart actors who understand the depth and complexity of the situation that creates a hypnotically fascinating atmosphere for the film to work in. Screenwriter David Koepp revisits some of the same territory he worked in Mission: Impossible but with a focus on low key suspense and mindgames rather than the big international set piece action that the film was prioritizing.
Fassbender and Blanchett are excellent: every dialogue scene feels like it has layers of meaning, only some which the audience is privy to at any moment. There’s a quiet rebellion in their love as they promise one another that their loyalty to each other comes before their loyalty to the firm, a declaration that could get them removed, or worse. They’re juxtaposed by the two couples of other suspects who freely engage in power games that verge on sociopathy because they’re emotionally trapped within the castle of deception their job requires of them.
Special attention should be paid to Pierce Brosnan, who obviously brings a ton of cinematic associations with him to any spy movie he appears in. As Stieglitz, he’s not just not playing James Bond but he allows himself to be a classic le Carre antagonist: cold, obsessed with their own vision of how things ought to be at the expense of how they are, and so far gone down the path of ends justifying the means that he no longer considers the means in any way.
Beautifully staged and photographed, thoughtfully performed, and masterfully paced and edited– Black Bag is a must watch film that, appropriately enough, seems to have slid in under the radar.
Extras include featurettes and deleted scenes.
Highest Recommendation.
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