Early in Black Bag, the latest from director Steven Soderbergh and screenwriter David Koepp (who together made this year’s fantastic ghost story Presence, as well as the 2022 thriller Kimi), Michael Fassbender’s master spy George Woodhouse makes it known that he doesn’t like liars. That makes his job at MI6 particularly tough since he’s surrounded by coworkers who are the best liars in the business. He even tells a chilling, twistedly funny story about revealing his father’s biggest lie at a family gathering, after surveying him for months and collecting the necessary evidence to fully bring him down for the liar that he was. It takes a while to realize it, but at its core, Black Bag is the story of how committed to uncovering liars George truly is, even if one of them might be his beloved wife, Kathryn (Cate Blanchett), who also happen to be an intelligence agent herself.
The film may sounds like a thriller, but in fact, Black Bag is a comedic relationship drama that keeps us guessing like a whodunit. But the bigger mystery is whether George would turn in Kathryn if she turned out to be the recently revealed MI6 mole who is on the verge of turning over top-secret, dangerous intel to the enemy. The evidence certainly seems stacked against her, but their pillow talk makes it clear George will go to any lengths to protect this great love of his life. The conflicting missions are clearly weighing on him, but both goals seem equally important, thus keeping us guessing how he will play this.
The search for the traitor also involves two other couples working at the agency, Regé-Jean Page as Col. James Stokes, whom I believe outranks everyone else under suspicion, and his companion, Dr. Zoe Vaughn (Naomie Harris), who serves as the agency’s in-house therapist to see if the pressures of the job are getting to anyone. Also dating are fellow agent Freddie Smalls (Tom Burke) and Clarissa Dubose (Marisa Abela), the tech whiz of the group. During the course of the film, George and Kathryn throw two dinners, during which George devises games for them to play that are actually his way of getting them to reveal things about themselves that they don’t mean to. Fassbender (who last worked with Soderbergh on 2011’s action-oriented spy story Haywire) plays George likes an emotionless, human lie detector, whose only mission is to get to the truth, turning the first of these two dinners into a version of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolfe? and the second into the final act of an Agatha Christie novel. Despite its dry tone, Black Bag is also a great deal of sadistic fun.
Pierce Brosnan pops in for a few scenes as everyone’s superior officer, there to assign missions and implore George to figure out who the mole is in a timely fashion, and I don’t think it’s an accident that Soderbergh has cast the former James Bond, as well as Harris, the most recent Miss Moneypenny, in this story of personal and professional intrigue amongst British spies. If anything, it only adds to the fun. There’s even an examination of the term “Black Bag,” which is something of a catch-all phrase between spies anytime they can’t talk about something top secret,(“Where are you flying off to on your next mission?” “Black bag.”), and how easy it is for spies to cheat on those closest to them because they have Black Bag to hide behind. George finds ways to test Kathryn’s loyalty to both him and MI6, and we don’t always know how he’ll respond to her letting either down.
The movie is a gripping, amusing, and a beautifully acted character study and relationship examination, and I found myself caught up just as much in the inner-workings of the marriage as I did about the spy intrigue. This is the stuff Soderbergh does so well when he’s working with great material, and the partnership he has with Koepp right now is some of his best recent work.
The film is now playing in theaters.
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