Hey, remember back when spy movies were sexy? Steven Soderbergh sure does and with his latest post retirement film, Black Bag, he and screenwriter David Koepp seem dead set on delivering a movie pumped full of subterfuge and lies that powered far more by loins and brains that just mindless, muscular spectacle.
Once upon a time, a good secret agent movie required it’s leads to out maneuver their foes with smarts rather than expansive action scenes and there’s just as much chance of the one that means to do you harm is sitting across from you in your office as they are sitting across a political divide. Seemingly hoping to single handedly kick start this sort of mature spy film once again, Soderbergh and Koepp also decides to muddy the waters even further by taking a look (possibly through an illegal spy satellite) at what type of relationships can possibly be born from a world where trust is in worryingly short supply – even between spouses.
After a top secret software program named Severus is leaked, po-faced British Intelligence officer George Woodhouse is given one week to weed out the perpetrator out of five possible suspects from his own branch. The first is young satellite imagery specialist Clarissa; her much older boyfriend and George’s colleague, Freddie; James, who recently scored a big, fat promotion and his girlfriend, Zoe, who just happens to be the agency psychologist – however, somewhat worryingly, the fifth an final suspect just so happens to be Kathryn Woodhouse; George’s wife who also is a veteran in British Intelligence.
While this creates something of a sticky wicket when it comes to the genuine devotion George and Kathryn have for one another and the devotion the rather icy agent has for his job (George despises liars, apparently), Woodhouse forges on with his investigation by inviting all the above for a meal. However, in an effort to get everyone in a loose lipped sort of mood, George drugs everyone present except his wife in order to watch the emotional fireworks that burst forth as both couples start airing their dirty relationship secrets all over the place only to have their relationships messily dissolve.
However, while George sits back and tries to pluck out any helpful clues out of these destructing relationships, he discovers some alarming evidence that places his beloved wife back into his crosshairs.
Unable to scratch that itch, he opts to have his surveilled with the illegal use of a satellite only to find that he may have been led into something of a trap that ultimately points the finger in an extraordinarily uncomfortable place. Has one of his suspects gotten wise to his tactics and thrown his game back in his face – or has the unthinkable happened? Has his wife turned rogue and will have to be given the most final version of “till death do us part” that can possibly exist?
Anyone who’s watched 2011s Haywire may realise that this is not the first time Steven Soderbergh has explored the tangled and stressful relationships between spies while throwing Michael Fassbender into the mix. But while the characters in that film settled their differences with hard hitting fight scenes, Black Bag takes a far more cerebral – and often more sexy – approach by going refreshingly old school and employing the kinds of stuff that the movies of yesteryear used to use so well.
There’s an essence of Michael Caine’s Harry Palmer in there (Fassbender’s horn rims are a dead giveaway) but there’s also a smidgen of John La Harry’s George Smiley in there too as our lead is a soft spoken, but diligent bloodhound who also has fiercely loyalty to his wife as he silently sizes up his prey. You can tell that both the director and writer (on their second collaboration after ghostly family drama Presence) have a very obvious passion for spy movies that deals heavily in words and gestures over gunplay and knuckle sandwiches and I have to say, the overall result is a massive breath of fresh air as the relationship stuff hooks you just as hard as the international mind games. In fact, while all the detective work, twists and theorising is infinitely gripping, the film truly finds its voice in two staggering sequences that bookend the whole film that both involve the core casts facing some massively uncomfortable truths over the Woodhouse’s dinner table. The first allows us to see just how good a manipulator our George truly is as he and Kathryn drugs their guests and essentially turn them on each other just to get some info and the whole thing plays like the greatest episode of Come Dine With Me that you’ve even seen. Sure, James Bond liked his vodka martinis shaken, not stirred, but apparently George Woodhouse prefers his tea spilled as everyone’s dirty secrets pour out to fascinating effect.
The cast is sublime. Not only do we get Pierce Brosnan as a ranting spy boss (Bond became “M” after all) alongside Naomi Harris, Furiosa’s Tom Burke, Bridgerton’s Regé-Jean Page and Back To Black’s Marisa Abela as a bunch of spies with more complex sexual politics than the entire first season of Archer, but we also get Fassbender and an impossibly slinky Cate Blanchett as the truly fascinating main couple that somehow manage to sizzle the screen not with any overtly saucy, onscreen entwining, but with a furious dedication to one another that proves to be far sexier than any of the adult conversations that transpire based around the conundrum of spies dating. In a world where lies are slipped on as easily as applying makeup of putting on a suit, how the hell is any relationship supposed to last when trust is painfully in short supply? The Woodhouse’s answer to this eternal question prove to be the backbone of the entire movie and at times almost feels like Mr. & Mrs Smith for psychotics – but, y’know, in a good way.
Soderbergh delivers a film that you practically drink through your eyeballs that casts the Woodhouse’s home in warm yellows and shadows while the spy stuff is cast in a more stark lighting that suggests that the less truth that is in evidence, the harsher it gets, but he doesn’t skimp on the tension either. With both of those dinner sequences and plenty of interrogations inbetween (there’s a cracker of a lie detector montage too), Black Bag not only is a fairly frank discussion and dissection of the nature of relationships, but it’s also a pretty nifty mystery story too that easily goes toe to toe with any recent whodunit you can think of and provides some pretty devastating twists while it’s at it.
But do you want to know how really impressive Black Bag is? Soderbergh manages to do all this in a scant and tight 94 minutes making something of a mockery of the expanded storytelling that people insist is better with the likes of prestige television. In this apparently confining run time, we get searing confessions, unforeseen revelations, a thrilling denouement and possibly the most enthralling cinematic couple we’re likely to see on screen all year.
Couples goals with a bullet.
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