Michael Fassbender and Cate Blanchett star in Academy Award-winning director Steven Soderbergh’s Black Bag. Photo: Supplied.
An edgy, psychological spy thriller, Black Bag puts the focus on character and emotional exploration within the espionage narrative.
Oscar-winning director Steven Soderbergh (Traffic, Erin Brockovich, Behind the Candelabra) adds his own distinctive ethos that permeates his work. He consistently pushes the boundaries of filmmaking, exploring new ways to tell stories and engage audiences.
His films are characterised by an intermingling of reality and fiction, with a tendency to explore complex themes through diverse perspectives. Here’s a spy drama where intrigue with cerebral depth forms a part of this reconnaissance love story. Appealing and lively, it is also entertaining and well directed, written and acted. You can sit back, watch and be entertained.
Black Bag features an ensemble cast comprising Michael Fassbender (The Killer), Cate Blanchett (Tár), Pierce Brosnan (GoldenEye), Marisa Abela (Barbie), Tom Burke (Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga), Naomie Harris (Skyfall) and Regé-Jean Page (Bridgerton).
The tense covert action drama written by legendary scribe David Koepp (Panic Room, Jurassic World: Rebirth, Spider-Man) revolves around a top British intelligence agent, George Woodhouse (Fassbender), who has an extraordinary talent for rooting out liars. That skill is put to the ultimate test when George is tasked with finding out whether his wife, Kathryn St Jean (Blanchett), is using surveillance tactics. Has she betrayed her country and, more importantly, their marriage?
Woodhouse faces the ultimate test – loyalty to his marriage and his country. He is given one week by his superior, Meacham, to investigate the leak of a top-secret software program codenamed Severus.
The film’s title is an allusion to the highly covert operations carried out by members of the intelligence community. According to the International Spy Museum in Washington, D.C., more specifically, a “Black Bag” operation refers to “secret entry into a home or office to steal or copy materials”.
While the film’s plot centres on espionage, the real story is about George and Kathryn’s marriage. It’s a test of their love and trust.
As Blanchett says: “My devotion to my marriage is my professional weakness.” At the film’s start you can tell they have an immense amount of trust in each other, otherwise the black bag wouldn’t work! Their love is stronger than the external forces trying to break them apart.
The film asks and answers whether you can genuinely really trust someone without knowing every aspect of their life. Soderbergh says true partnership requires individuality.
“Yes, you should allow yourself to open up, but not if that sacrifices who you are as an individual. When you do that, then love can be unbreakable.”
Cheating is not to be taken lightly in Black Bag — and the other is its stars — not one, but two — Fassbender and Blanchett. On display is what they do best: their palpable chemistry lights up the screen!
However, at first, it’s hard to trust either — and anyone else — as Soderbergh and his frequent collaborator, Koepp, establish in the beginning in a situation where someone is vulnerable and their fate is uncertain, when a breach of trust is involved. Koepp’s script is concise, with unambiguous direction.
Watching the main characters and their dynamics with each other was enjoyable, especially when the atmosphere thickened, crackling with tension.
Soderbergh leads another masterclass in suspenseful storytelling, a film that exchanges dynamic activity for intense, intellectual astuteness. Instead of depending on chases or explosions, the film flourishes on intellective warfare, complex exchanges and the apprehensive burden of secrets.
Signature sleek cinematography by Peter Andrews, combined with a muted yet atmospheric score from David Holmes, enhances the film’s 94 minutes of slow progression of strain, making every pause and glance loaded with emotional weight and meaning.
Black Bag sashays to a pleasurable beat, enveloping us with charm, in a slick relationship drama that’s also about the vicissitudes of monogamous love.
While Black Bag is not based on a true story, Koepp did find himself inspired by the accounts of real-world intelligence operatives whom he had interviewed while penning the script for the original Mission: Impossible movie.
In the production notes, Koepp outlines: “All the spy-craft stuff was very cool, but I learned more than I ever expected about the people. One woman told me that her job made it impossible for her to sustain a relationship. A line in the movie was inspired by my conversations with her: ‘When you can lie about everything, how do you tell the truth about anything?’”
Black Bag, directed by Steven Soderbergh, is now streaming on Netflix
