The Spy Who (Maybe) Loved Me
My thoughts on Black Bag
Steven Soderbergh’s Black Bag is undeniably a spy film through and through but not the kind filled with the sort of wild thrills and kinetic action beats found in things like the James Bond and Jason Bourne franchises. Instead, it leans closer towards the kind of spy narratives favored by the likes of John le Carre, stories that favor scenes that typically feature a hard-nosed type cornering someone else in a room with damaging information on them and trying to parlay that into gaining damaging information on someone else. And yet, while it may be lacking in overt action—this is the rare spy film where you can count the number of bullets fired on-camera on one hand—that does not make it any less gripping to watch. Indeed, this is smartly written, tautly directed and wonderfully acted work that serves as a wonderful and much-needed throwback to the time when studios regularly put out films of this sort—mid-budget works aimed primarily at adult sensibilities that were not necessarily trying to be blockbusters—and also proves to be Soderbergh’s most engaging and satisfying work in quite a while.
As the film opens, top British intelligence agent George Woodhouse (Michael Fassbender) heads to a meeting in the back alley of a flashy nightclub where he is tasked with his latest mission—he has one week to use his powers of deduction and seeing through the lies of others to find and identify the agent in their midst who may be involved in a plot to steal an all-powerful cyber device dubbed Severus that could cause nuclear catastrophe if it fell into the wrong hands. The five-person suspect poll includes Freddie Smalls (Tom Burke), an agent with a reckless personal life riddled with infidelities, surveillance expert Clarissa Dubose (Marisa Abela), dashing young bad boy James Stokes (Rege-Jean Page) and psychiatrist Zoe Vaughn (Naomie Harris). To make things complicated, these four are coupled up in relationships that are hardly as steady as they seem on the surface. To make things really complicated, the fifth name on the list is none other than George’s own wife, ace agent Kathryn St. Jean (Cate Blanchett), though he neglect to mention that to her when the two invite the others to a dinner party at their chicly designed townhouse that George hopes will help him to ferret out his target.
Although there are a number of wonderful sequences in the film, the dinner party is the unquestioned highlight. Although George is clearly the expert in investigating people in order to get at their darkest and most dangerous secrets, the others are no slouches as well and even before they arrive, they are convinced that something is up. Once the group sits down for dinner, the fireworks begin as George introduces banter that isn’t as innocuous as it seems before suggesting that they all play a game—each person is to make a deeply personal resolution for the person sitting to their right, hopefully to allow the hidden fissures in their relationships to come to the surface. As the sequence moves from light-hearted banter to darker barbs, it proves to be so engrossing that I found myself thinking that if the entire film was just this—sort of a My Dinner with Andre with a higher security clearance—I would have been quite happy with that. However, the scene and the party end on a sudden note of actual physical violence and at this point, I will say no more in order to allow you to discover things for yourself.
The basic idea of Black Bag—to show both the parallels and the differences between the lies and betrayals that come so easily to those in the espionage game and the ones that those same people indulge in via their personal relationships—may not be the freshest notion, I suppose, but the script by David Koepp does such a good job at presenting it in such a sly, witty and blessedly taut (the film clocks in at 93 minutes and doesn’t waste one of them) that few are likely to gripe. Although the question of Kathryn’s guilt or innocence is essentially disposed on a little too early, the scenes with George grappling with the possibility that there may be more (or less) to his seemingly ideal marriage that meets even his ever-inquiring eye. Likewise, Soderbergh is not exactly breaking into new territory here either—he has made a number of low-fi thrillers throughout his career, such as The Good German, Haywire and Kimi, and the handling of the relationship between George and Kathryn will no doubt remind many of the one between George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez in Out of Sight—but he directs the material in a smooth and surprisingly efficient manner that eschews visual flash for the most part and helps keep viewers on their toes until the very end.
Needless to say, the script contains more than enough material to keep the actors hopping and the entire ensemble cast get their moments to shine. Channeling Harry Palmer, the low-key alternative to the Bond shenanigans in the Sixties by Michael Caine, Fassbender does an excellent job of presenting both George’s cool efficiency as he pursues his quarry and his struggle to balance his obvious love for Kathryn with his suspicions about her and Blanchett is more than his equal with one of the most charismatic turns of her entire career—the two play so wonderfully off of each other that you immediately want to see them teams up again as soon as possible. The supporting players are also quite good as well with Abela—whose performance as Amy Winehouse was the only saving grace of the dreadful biopic Back to Black—the biggest standout in a turn so different from that previous performance that even the few who actually saw it will recognize her here as the same person. The film also pays sly homage to the ultimate spy franchise by filling the role of the head of the intelligence agency with none other than Pierce Brosnan, who brings an additional level of tension and menace to the proceedings whenever he pops up on the screen.
As I said, Black Bag is a spy movie but it is one that is less concerned with the fate of the world than with the fate of the relationship between George and Kathryn, though Soderbergh and Koepp manage to mine both for maximum tension and drama. While it may lack any major action scenes, it is nevertheless put together by Soderbergh (once again acting as his own cinematographer and editor) in a stylish and compelling manner that keeps viewers riveted despite the fact that most of the film consists of people talking to each other in impeccably designed rooms. Those looking for straight-up visceral thrills may want to look elsewhere but if you are in the mood for a smart and modestly scaled film for adults that doesn’t insult their intelligence and is wildly entertaining to boot, I think you may enjoy Black Bag as much as I did.