BLACK BAG is a scathingly brilliant take on truth, lies, and the sanctity of marriage, and the perfect vehicle for Cate Blanchett and Michael Fassbender. A good marriage that is, such as the one enjoyed by George Woodhouse (Fassbender) and Kathryn St. Jean (Blanchett), British spies with the highest security clearance They are the perfect couple, each with their own territories, personal and professional: he is a tightly wound introvert who cooks and tidies, she’s lives life in bold strokes as she frets about money and dreams of occupying the agency’s top job currently held by Arthur Stieglitz (Pierce Brosnan). Their bliss is ruffled when a fellow agent (Gustaf Skarsgård) arranges a suitably clandestine meet with George to tell him that there is a traitor in their midst, and among the five suspects is Kathryn. George accepts the assignment to find the traitor, and promises, with the steely detachment that is his trademark, that he won’t let personal feelings get in the way. We spend the rest of the film in a state of exquisite suspense wondering if George is up to the task of dealing with the putative betrayal on the part of the woman he loves, and whether or not Kathryn, equally smitten (or is she?) is on to him.
George, in a fit of what may be whimsey, does not march them all to his polygraph machine, but instead invites them to a dinner party. They fall neatly into two couples. Freddie Smalls (Tom Burke), an agent self-confessed as debauched and in debt, and his younger girlfriend, Clarissa Dubose (Marisa Abela), a tech whiz with Daddy issues and a generous IQ. The other couple is Dr. Zoe Vaughan (Naomie Harris), the agency psychologist with inconvenient ethics, and Col. James “Ramrod” Stokes (Regé-Jean Page), George’s underling known for his derring-do and serial conquests. When they are gathered on short notice, suspicions are aroused. When George proposes an unusual party game, feathers are more than ruffled, and George is no closer to discovering the traitor, though there are tantalizing clues, some of which he prefers to ignore.
The script by David Koepp twists and turns in ways that are both in keeping with the genre and yet seem fresh even when they are not novel, including a McGuffin that could kill tens of thousands of innocent people, spy satellites that can read lips, and a tip on how to beat the lie-detector. Nothing, of course, is ever quite what it seems, and the surprises can startle without the surety of revealing what the characters (or we) need to know. The dialogue sparkles with double meanings and a mordant humor delivered with panache by a sterling cast. From the deliberate way that Fassbender puts down a glass of wine, to the way Blanchett swings her hair and fixes her eyes on the object of her condescension, to the way Abela positively glows when admitting to thinking that she is smarter than everyone else, these are thespians who understand the power of nuance to effectively electrify by getting under our skins and invading our psyches.
The stakes are high and emotions are savage, but as in all Soderbergh films, those feelings lurk beneath a calm façade that borders on the arctic, with minimal drama aside from a startling outburst or two. Most of the outbursts are far more subtle, and devastating, as the psychological game of one-upmanship plays out among people who are professional liars, with the requisite acting skills to convince their targets of almost anything. Targets who may or may not actually be convinced.
BLACK BAG considers the ramifications of a job where you lie for a living. How, then, can you begin to tell the truth? And what are the consequences to one’s being? Who are we when everything is a game? Sure, it’s great to have a film that asks us to ponder that bigger question, but it’s sublime when it’s packaged in such a taut intellectual puzzle that is also so much fun.
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