If you’re a fan of spy thrillers, much of Black Bag will sound familiar.  The plot involves two MI6 agents, their scheming colleagues and a computer virus that, when unleashed by Russian bad guys, will change the balance of power in the world by causing the death of thousands of innocent civilians.  This could be the basis of another impossible mission for Ethan Hunt, the next James Bond adventure or even a streaming series.  (There are many good ones to choose from these days.)  What’s different about Black Bag is that the heroic agents are happily married and have been for thirty-five years.  Yes, the fate of the free world is in the hands of a monogamous couple, as well as a fellow agent who hasn’t forgotten her Christian school upbringing.  If you believe that old fashioned values don’t matter in today’s world, director Steven Soderbergh and writer David Koepp beg to differ.

The spouses in question are George Woodhouse (Michael Fassbender, buttoned up and tightly wound) and Kathryn St. Jean (a typically icy Cate Blanchett).  They’re both handsome and stylish, as is their London home.  Their dual careers as spooks obviously suits them, leaving their colleagues dumbfounded at how they make things work.  George and Kathryn are professional liars and secret-keepers, after all.  George tells a colleague that it all comes down to faith.  His marriage is built upon mutual trust.  Without it, there’s no chance they would have stayed together as long as they have.  It’s a lesson that their colleagues, who sleep with each other for sport, would do well to learn.

The theme of fidelity to one’s partner surfaces at the end of the movie’s opening sequence, a continuous dolly shot from Soderbergh that follows George on his meet-up with fellow agent Meacham (Gustaf Skarsgård, of the Skarsgård family).  Meacham tells George to find out who leaked a top-secret program called Severus.  (Probably named after the Roman emperor, but I like to think it was named after the Harry Potter character.)  Meacham then confides that his wife is mad at him for sleeping around.  George responds matter-of-factly that she wouldn’t be if he stopped doing that.  Meacham agrees, but says he can’t because hookup opportunities are too easy to come by.

Meacham then dies from a heart attack, a karmic punishment for his philandering.  Since Meacham wasn’t an older man, George finds Meacham’s death suspicious.  As the administrator of polygraph tests, George devises a plan to suss out who on his team leaked the code.  He’ll have them all come to his house for dinner and use his powers of deduction (and truth serum-infused wine) to find out who the bad actor is.

The dinner party is a tense one, basically because everyone besides George and Kathryn are a hot mess.  George turns up the heat by having everyone playing a game that will get their animosities out in the open.  Although New Year’s Day is long past, he has each person make a resolution for the person on their right.  Satellite imagery specialist Clarissa (Marisa Abela) is upset because George passed her up for promotion and because her boyfriend Freddie (Tom Burke playing beardface) is cheating on her.  Which he denies and responds by accusing Clarissa of being paranoid.  Dr. Zoe Vaughan (former Moneypenny Naomie Harris) has recently broken up with Col. James Stokes (roguishly handsome Regé-Jean Page) because he’s a man-child.  Stokes wants to be “the man” but is jealous of his teammates.

Tempers flare as everyone airs their grievances, especially Clarissa, who stabs Freddie with a knife.  The party breaks up at that point, and George is no closer to finding out who’s responsible for the leak.  That night, George finds a movie ticket stub in the trash and is surprised when Kathryn says she hasn’t seen the film.  When they later see it together, George notes that Kathryn acts like she hasn’t seen it before.  He also learns from James that someone used a dead identity to set up a foreign bank account in Zurich with seven million pounds in it.  The identity used was a woman, and it just so happens that Kathryn is meeting a contact in Zurich in a few days.  

These clues feed George’s suspicions even more, but determining whether Kathryn is the leaker isn’t a simple thing.  She’s a field agent and an expert at being duplicitous.  Her trip to Zurich is a “black bag” assignment, which precludes her from telling George anything about it.  Although he’s known for being a “play it by the book” guy, George snoops around and finds where Kathryn’s clandestine meeting will be held.  Then he has Clarissa help him observe her by satellite.  Unfortunately, George’s spying results in the worst possible outcome (remember those Russians I mentioned earlier?), and he has no choice but to confess to Kathryn.  

Turns out Kathryn’s mission was pointless, which made her suspicious.  The two have been played, but by whom, and why?  Upset that someone on the team is messing with his marriage, George invites everyone back for another dinner party.  This excites Kathryn, who loves it when parties get messy and require cleaning up.

Recommendation

Black Bag has a lot going for it.  It’s directed, shot and edited by Steven Soderbergh, who elevates the material to a higher level.  As was evident with Presence, his sleek style can make even the thinnest material worth watching.  Soderbergh has much more to work with here than that wan ghost story, and he makes this ordinary espionage thriller as electric as it could ever be.  As is typical for a Soderbergh film, every shot is beautifully framed and perfectly lit.  As the editor, he keeps the story moving at a brisk place, never allowing a scene to overstay its welcome.  The film’s light and jazzy score is from David Holmes, a regular contributor on Soderbergh’s films.  If you’ve seen Ocean’s Eleven as many times as I have, you’ll immediately recognize the similarities.

The movie serves as a reunion of sorts for Soderbergh, with Michael Fassbender (Haywire) and Cate Blanchett (The Good German) as the married MI6 agents at the center of things.  Although their performances aren’t particularly noteworthy here, Soderbergh uses their contrasting acting styles to generate sparks between them.  Fassbender plays another emotionally repressed leader in the Magneto and Steve Jobs mold, while Blanchett is all steely gazes and crocodile  grins.  The supporting cast is solid, with each adding their singular quirks and energy to the proceedings.

The issue I had with Black Bag is with its scope.  The movie suffers from a lack of ambition.  Considering the stakes involved, I kept waiting for the movie to take me outside of London.  When it does, it amounts to a brief meeting on a bench in Zurich and a shot of an exploding car on a country road.  The film didn’t need to resort to the globe-trotting extremes of the Bond, Mission Impossible or Bourne films, but it feels unnaturally tethered to three principle locations (a home, an office and a lake).

Soderbergh has collaborated with screenwriter David Koepp frequently over the past several years, and I understand why he was drawn to this screenplay.  It’s full of agitated spy banter, which is fun to listen to but eventually makes all of the characters sound alike.  Aside from Fassbender’s character, nobody has more than one defining personality trait.  Blanchett is as captivating as she always is, but I’ll be damned if I can remember anything about her beyond her flowing wardrobe.  Pierce Brosnan has a cameo in the movie, which is notable only for a restaurant scene with a live fish entree.  Coming in at ninety minutes, the movie feels skimpy and would have benefitted from an additional ten or fifteen minutes of character development and backstory.

With its limited scope, Black Bag looks like a well-made episode of a television series headlined by two A-List actors.  Thankfully, Steven Soderberg’s visually arresting direction and charismatic performances from Cate Blanchett and Michael Fassbender ensure this modest tale of skullduggery is always entertaining.  Recommended.

Analysis

To my amazement, the underlying message of Black Bag is that old-fashioned values will save the world.  First is the sanctity of marriage, symbolized by George and Kathryn’s union.  They trust and respect each other, despite the “black bag” nature of their professions.  Even after thirty-five years of marriage, they still profess their willingness to kill for the other.  Like any married couple, they have faith that their spouse isn’t abusing their trust when they’re not around, which is more than can be said for their colleagues.

The movie also celebrates the morality that comes from a solid Christian upbringing.  Dr. Vaughan is uncomfortable with innocent people dying as part of Stiegliz and Stokes’ plan, and her guilt makes it impossible to keep that information to herself.  To her, not acting on the information she had would have been a grievous sin, which is why she confesses everything to Freddie.

Finally, the plot hinges on the tradition of seeing movies in a theater.  Although George doesn’t know he’s being played when he finds a discarded movie ticket in the trash, he confirms as such when he observes Kathryn watching a movie that she supposedly already saw.  Accomplishing the same thing with a streaming service would have been impossible.  Long live movie theaters!

All told, I’m not sure if Soderbergh and Koepp were being sincere, subversive or both.

Nice swing there, buddy.

As I mentioned in my review of Presence, I haven’t paid much attention to Steven Soderberg’s output since he “retired” in 2013.  After having seen that film and now Black Bag, the impression I’m left with from these efforts is that they’re the equivalent of watching a former professional golfer at the driving range.  If Presence was Soderberg practicing his chip shot, then Black Bag is him wowing the crowd with impressive drives off the tee.  Everyone who’s seen Soderberg’s crowd-pleasers, like Out of Sight, the Ocean trilogy and Magic Mike, knows that he can pull off a stylish movie without breaking a sweat.  And while watching a professional like Soderbergh practicing can be entertaining, it’s not as interesting if he’d play a round.  He needs to stop being content with churning out these well-crafted but undeniably smallish efforts and challenge himself more.

The Enhancer.

Presence and Black Bag are two films that benefit tremendously from Soderberg’s involvement.  Both films would easily have been worse if directed by almost anyone else, but there are few directors, if any, who could have made them better.  If Soderberg’s challenge is to make these films the best that they could possibly be, he’s succeeding.  But what satisfaction is there in taking a C or B-level screenplay and making a C+ or B+ movie from it?

Although Soderbergh played a huge role in making Out of Sight, Traffic, Ocean’s Eleven and Magic Mike modern classics, those films had sharp scripts that were full of interesting, well-defined characters.  Presence and Black Bag, both written by David Koepp, are both fine plot-wise but suffer because the characterizations are thin.  Soderbergh makes both stories more interesting than they are on the page, but his camera can only compensate so much for what wasn’t there to begin with.

A national treasure

I previously sang Cate Blanchett’s praises for her incredible performance in Tar.  Looking back at her career, which for me began with 1998’s Elizabeth, I’m convinced she’s the best actress of her generation.  She’s one of the few who can effortlessly work in so many genres and be excellent in all of them.  In period pieces (Elizabeth and The Golden Age), fantasy (The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit trilogies), pulp (Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull), superhero (Thor: Ragnarok), drama (The Aviator, Babel, Notes on a Scandal), comedy (Blue Jasmine), horror (The Gift, Nightmare Alley) and suspense thrillers (Black Bag), Blanchett’s indelible presence and talent has made all of these films better.

Any actor who is as prolific as Blanchett will have the occasional misfire.  For example, she couldn’t find the right tone in Don’t Look Up, but that movie had much bigger problems than her performance.  I haven’t seen Borderlands, but it looks like it may be her worst.  Regardless, Blanchett is probably one of the few actors working today who has earned the right to be called a star.  Accordingly, I fully expect Australia to erect a statue in her honor whenever she does retire.

Personas to the rescue

In addition to Soderbergh’s direction, Black Bag gets a lot of mileage out of Blanchett and Fassbender’s well-known movie personas.  Both are excellent actors and are very good in this film, but this film only requires them to “play their hits” due to the lack of tangible character development.  What would have made Black Bag better is if their roles had been switched, allowing them to play against type.  Wouldn’t it have been more interesting to see Blanchett as the anal-retentive, fastidious inquisitor and Fassbender as the intense spy?