Steven Soderbergh is a prolific filmmaker who takes a lot of swings and tries a lot of stuff. Not everything he makes works, but when he hits, he HITS, and his latest film, sexy spy thriller Black Bag, is a home run. Working once again with screenwriter David Koepp, following their collaborations on Kimi and Presence, Soderbergh dips into the spy genre with a side of marriage drama—or is it a marriage drama with a side of spying?
The obvious point of reference is the 2005 film Mr. & Mrs. Smith, which is about a married couple of spies, but unlike in that film, in Black Bag the spy spouses know they’re both spies; they even work for the same intelligence agency. Michael Fassbender stars as George Woodhouse, an uptight, be-turtlenecked spy, and Cate Blanchett stars as the capable and sexy Kathryn St. Jean, George’s wife. Their marriage is passionate and committed, they keep secrets, but they’re honest about doing so, and despite the necessary canyons of “black bag” secrets between them, George’s trust in Kathryn is unshakeable…until he’s tasked with finding a double agent in their ranks and Kathryn is among the suspects.
Fassbender and Blanchett are electric as a screen couple, well matched as performers and as ridiculously good-looking people on screen. George and Kathryn are an obnoxiously handsome couple, impossibly urbane and suave. But for all the passion between them, Soderbergh, working as his own cinematographer, keeps the film’s color temperature cool. There is a pervasive chill in Black Bag, one that suits the spy game but doesn’t suit George and Kathryn, who are all horned up for each other. That chilliness, though, lends the film a tone similar to Michael Mann’s films, which are often simultaneously stone-cold crime dramas and deeply romantic.
Surrounding Fassbender and Blanchett is a spectacular ensemble including Pierce Brosnan, Naomie Harris, Tom Burke, Marisa Abela, and Regé-Jean Page, who plays a particularly determined spy. (Page’s performance is sure to stoke the 007 fires once again.) Rather than bumble about with deep plots, George just invites everyone over to dinner and unleashes spy hell on the group, including Kathryn, to get to the bottom of the mystery. From there, Black Bag is a sprint to the finish; at just over 90 minutes, the film wastes no time. It’s an incredibly tight, quickly paced spy thriller that feels like a throwback to the kind of competent, confident espionage flicks we used to get on the regular.
Soderbergh and Koepp have gotten better with every collaboration, and Black Bag is their best film yet. It’s twisty, it’s sexy, it’s not three hours long. The spy story is basically window dressing for a marital drama about the importance of trust in a long-term relationship, and Fassbender and Blanchett are fantastic as a couple with strange but firm boundaries, who won’t even let national secrets come between them.
There is a version of this film that is very silly, but between Soderbergh’s style, Koepp’s mystery, and Fassbender and Blanchett’s sexy, romantic dual act as a spy couple in love, Black Bag is a taut thriller with a romantic streak, or a romantic movie with a thriller edge. Either way, it’s the sort of stylized thriller that used to power the mid-level box office and now feels like a much-needed breath of fresh air.
Black Bag is now playing exclusively in theaters.
