Espionage thriller Black Bag is arguably director Steven Soderbergh’s sexiest and most knotty caper since Out of Sight, released way back in 1998. Like that film, Black Bag tracks the week-long exploits of two incredibly attractive people — MI6 agent George Woodhouse (Michael Fassbender) and his wife, fellow MI6 intelligence officer Kathryn St Jean (Cate Blanchett). The couple gets caught up in a complex conspiracy at work — one that makes as many demands of their marriage as it does of their professional lives.
Black Bag is an increasingly rare beast — a brainy adult thriller with current plot points. It demands your attention despite its brevity.
The film’s title is a reference to a government agency greenlighting a covert illegal operation in the pursuit of suspected criminals. The story starts with George getting a discreet directive from his boss, Philip Meacham (Gustaf Skarsgård). Meacham thinks that there’s been a security breach and that one of five people at MI6 has stolen a top-secret software program, Severus, and he wants to find out who it is. The suspects are a pair of agency handlers, Freddie Smalls (Tom Burke, Furiosa) and Colonel James Stokes (Regé-Jean Page), Freddie’s girlfriend and satellite analyst Clarissa Dubose (Marisa Abela), agency psychiatrist Dr Zoe Vaughan (Naomie Harris) and, shockingly, Kathryn. George begins his investigation with a dinner party designed to allow him to get a read on his suspects, and fans out from there, asking favors and flouting protocols along the way. As George digs deeper and deeper into the geopolitical mystery, the film moves briskly toward a Poirot-style showdown among the suspects.
At its core, Black Bag is a dual spy thriller and marriage drama. In the opening scene, George is essentially asked which he puts first: king and country or spouse? It would be like Mr and Mrs Smith if that film were much smarter and less obsessed with gunplay. The complex and twisty narrative that’s also timely and not beyond the realm of possibility starts from a similar premise and lets its various intertwining threads, double crosses and secret agendas guide its storytelling. Everything George discovers — which Soderbergh and writer David Koepp keep close to the chest until the reveal — relates to his marriage. And he digs himself into successively deeper holes as a result.
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Soderbergh and Koepp (Jurassic Park, Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man) have crafted a lean, sleek, efficient spy caper with just enough emotional subtext to make vintage espionage action feel relevant — as well as fun. George’s focus on his wife and the possibility of her betraying both him and their country intensify into a personal anxiety and uncertainty that can happen in any long-term relationship. The fate of the world is secondary to the fate of one household in Black Bag.
Nonetheless Soderbergh manages to keep the film firmly within the parameters of an entertaining yarn, thanks in large part to a stellar cast that knows exactly what it is doing with the witty, sometimes arch, dialogue at every turn. Fassbender is on his third go as a spy of some sort, following David Fincher’s The Killer and television series The Agency, but in Black Bag, he injects his icy professionalism with a warm streak that makes us intuitively understand his bond with Kathryn. For her part, Blanchett is elegant, intimidating and intellectual. They are flawless together (almost as good as George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez in Out of Sight). Watching them navigate their work-life balance makes for a surprisingly good, old-fashioned time at the movies.
