Yahoo Lifestyle ‘Black Bag’ Review: Steven Soderbergh Dashes Off a Smart, Sexy Thriller About a Spy Couple With Trust Issues
Continuing to prove that retirement is not just overrated, but a real impediment to an artist’s best work, in “Black Bag,” Steven Soderbergh dashes off a sleek little genre exercise — a doodle really, at a stage in his career when he’s clearly just having fun — that proves to be one of his smartest and sexiest films yet. Heading up an impeccable cast are Michael Fassbender and Cate Blanchett, who play George Woodhouse and Kathryn St. Jean, a Nick and Nora-like couple of spies so deeply, foolishly in love that they find it inconceivable that the mole in the British intelligence agency for which they both work could well be their spouse.
Most successful marriages are built on trust. Once that much is established, then there’s room — if not a full-blown psychological need — for both parties to maintain a sort of secret garden where they can keep a few things private. The brilliance of “Black Bag,” which marks the director’s third project with David Koepp (after “Kimi” and “Presence”), isn’t just the way it puts the stakes between this particular couple on a much level, where tens of thousands of lives hinge on what they choose to hide from one another, but how an effective spy movie can simultaneously say so much about human relationships.
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From the opening shot — one of those three-minute, unbroken-take numbers that shadows George, “Goodfellas”-style, through the streets, down into a nightclub and back up to the surface on the back of his shark-like protagonist — we get the sense that Soderbergh could be making this movie in his sleep. That’s how comfortable the director is navigating both the physical and psychological spaces where “Black Bag” unfolds. As introduced in this scene, George reads as ruthlessly efficient and not the slightest bit emotional, although we’ll soon learn (back at home, reunited with his wife Kathryn) that he actually values his wedding vows above any oaths sworn to his country.
Looking at George, it’s hard not to think of the hit-man character Fassbender played just over a year before in David Fincher’s “The Killer,” a movie that cost nearly three times the budget, but wasn’t even a fraction as effective as this one. In both films, Fassbender embodies someone who isn’t all there — a methodical, borderline-autistic operative whose single-minded commitment to the assignment at hand makes him uniquely lethal to any who challenge him.
“Armed” with a list of five colleagues (among whom Kathryn’s name is included) with the clearance level and motive to have possibly stolen the dangerous Severus technology, George arranges a dinner party at their place for the suspects. “Darling, you may not dose our guests,” Kathryn chides her husband, who’s laced the main course with DZM5 truth serum. It’s a nice touch by Koepp, the way these two characters so casually discuss aspects of the trade, much as any married couple might describe an ordinary day at the office.
These two were made for each other, observes Clarissa Dubose (Marisa Abela), a surveillance expert who’s been having a tricky time with a workplace relationship of her own, to Freddie Smalls (Tom Burke). They’re both suspects, too, as are smooth operator James Stokes (Regé-Jean Page, demonstrating his suave James Bond potential) and his partner/bureau psychologist Zoe Vaughn (Naomie Harris).
Surrounded by this slippery bunch of trained liars, George and Kathryn skillfully emcee a tense night of mind games, which ends with one of the guests stabbing another with a steak knife. As usual, Soderbergh shoots and edits it all himself, drawing from a career’s worth of behind-the-camera experience to bring an elegant, unsettling edge to what could have been a ragged, DIY scene (à la dinner party that opens Ben Wheatley’s “Kill List,” for example). Instead, the director-cum-director-of-photography commits to a dramatic anamorphic look where every light source, from tiny tabletop candles to full-blown chandeliers, emits an intense, almost radioactive glow — a welcome change from “Presence,” which made the lo-fi ghost-POV gimmick so central to its execution.
“Black Bag” is a reminder of just how enjoyable Soderbergh can be when he’s riffing on well-worn genre material, from “Out of Sight” to “Ocean’s Eleven.” He and Koepp keep us guessing, but they also get us thinking about something deeper than which of these characters could be the mole (don’t rule out 007 veteran Pierce Brosnan, delivering a brief but effective performance as their agency boss). Ultimately, it’s the marriage theme that gives “Black Bag” heft.
The film’s title refers to a security designation for anything classified that makes trust especially difficult between agents. Whenever something arises that they’d rather not confess to their partner, it can be explained away with two words: “black bag” — a spy’s way of enforcing the aforementioned “secret garden” idea. And yet, that makes a meaningful relationship all but impossible in their line of work. “We’re all professional liars,” complains Clarissa. “How can you tell the truth about anything?”
The movie toys with the idea that Kathryn could be compromised. So too could George, who swears complete honesty with his wife, even as he investigates Kathryn’s upcoming trip to Zurich behind her back. The two insist they’d kill for one another if necessary, and though there’s surprisingly little on-screen violence in the film, Soderbergh has no intention of wrapping “Black Bag” without testing those claims.
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