It feels like only yesterday that I was recommending a new movie from the director Steven Soderbergh and the screenwriter David Koepp. Actually, it was about two months ago; the movie was Presence, a ghost story made with the thrift and ingenuity that Soderbergh has long been known for. He and Koepp have become ideal creative partners; they're both prolific Hollywood veterans, in their early 60s, who know genre conventions inside out, and who continue to play with those conventions in smart, stylish ways.
Compared with Presence and their earlier thriller, Kimi, Soderbergh and Koepp's latest outing, Black Bag, is certainly a slicker, bigger-budget affair. But it still has a breezy, light-fingered intelligence that feels consistent with their MO.
Cate Blanchett and Michael Fassbender star as Kathryn and George, two brilliant, high-ranking operatives for Britain's National Cyber Security Centre, or NCSC. They're also a longtime married couple — not an easy feat in a profession where monogamous commitment, especially between two agents, is virtually unheard of.
It's fair to ask how much Kathryn and George can really trust each other, given the insane levels of duplicity and compartmentalization their jobs require. The title, Black Bag, is basically shorthand for classified intel — something Kathryn and George say when they're going somewhere or doing something that they can't disclose.
The plot is set in motion by one of those signature movie MacGuffins: A deadly cyber-weapon, called Severus, has fallen into the wrong hands. NCSC suspects one of its own, and so it enlists George, a master at sussing out lies, to figure out who. George tells Kathryn that they'll be hosting a dinner party for four of their colleagues, one of whom is the mole. What he doesn't tell Kathryn is that she herself is a suspect.
The four dinner guests are a compelling group, in part because they, too, are romantically paired off, which makes the whole evening play a bit like a John Le Carré rewrite of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Tom Burke plays Freddie, a longtime agent whose reputation for drinking and philandering makes him a volatile match for Clarissa, a smart young data expert played by Marisa Abela. Regé-Jean Page, of Bridgerton fame, plays an ambitious young agent named James, who's in a similarly stormy relationship with Dr. Zoe Vaughan, the agency psychiatrist. She's in the mildly kinky position of knowing everyone's intimate secrets — some of them, anyway.
Zoe is played by Naomie Harris, who was Moneypenny in the last three James Bond movies. That's not the only 007 tie-in; look out for Pierce Brosnan in a key supporting role as a glowering agency head. Black Bag has its share of Bond-style globe-trotting intrigue — there's a mysterious murder, a brief car explosion and a nail-biter of a secret mission to Zurich — but at heart, it isn't really an action movie. It's a marital dramedy masquerading as an espionage thriller, or maybe it's the other way around. Either way, it's a witty, sexy riff on themes of loyalty and betrayal in relationships as well as on the geopolitical stage. The story unfolds as a series of teasingly intimate one-on-one conversations, in which secrets, lies, red herrings and revelations are dished out.
It's been a while since I've seen an ensemble of actors this deliciously in sync; there's an almost promiscuous energy to the way the story keeps pairing the characters off, in new and surprising configurations. Fassbender and Abela have a few chaste but scintillating scenes together. And there's an extraordinary sequence in which Kathryn goes in for a therapy session with Zoe — a battle of wits for which both Blanchett and Harris are exceedingly well equipped.
In the end, though, it's Kathryn and George who hold our attention the most. They've both been told that their marriage is their one major weakness, as it risks compromising them both. And Blanchett and Fassbender, without so much as a hint of histrionics, convey that, even amid all the fun and games, something real is very much at stake.
I don't think it gives away too much to say that Black Bag is ultimately an ode to a happy marriage. I'm talking about George and Kathryn, of course — but after three terrific movies in a row, I'm also talking, a little, about Soderbergh and Koepp.
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