BLACK BAG

There’s an old adage that says don’t bring your work home with you. However, in the new spy thriller BLACK BAG, Cate Blanchett and Michael Fassbender play Kathryn and George, two British spies married to one another who find their dual lives intertwined in an ever-tightening noose when they’re forced to spy on one another.

George is a British intelligence officer assigned to investigate who leaked a top-secret software code called Severus. Kathryn is one of the five suspects in the leak, with the other four two pairs of fellow spy couples. George plans to play them all off each other psychologically. He invites them all to a dinner party where he drugs their food to loosen up their inhibitions and spill the truth.

By the time the night is over, one male guest has admitted he cheated on his girlfriend, only to have her stab him with a knife in the hand in retaliation. Worse, George’s superior officer Meacham dies of a suspicious heart attack, and George has discovered that Kathryn is jetting off to Zurich for a secret meeting with a Russian agent about whom she hasn’t told him.

George illicitly redirects British spy satellites to spy on Kathryn’s meeting in Zurich, inadvertently taking cameras off a Russian safehouse, when another Russian agent escapes with a copy of the Severus program. Meanwhile, that agent races to Eastern Europe with the program in the hopes of causing a nuclear meltdown that will destabilize the Russian government.

Realizing Kathryn is not the bad guy, George and Kathryn escalate the mind games against their four friends. They organize intense polygraphs and set up another dinner party that becomes a mental and verbal battle royale.

Can the dynamic duo avert the nuclear disaster and manage to keep their marriage intact after George’s initial distrust?

BLACK BAG is a moody, highly intelligent spy thriller from arthouse star director Steven Soderbergh (OCEANS 11 and many more) and veteran ace screenwriter David Koepp (writer of Indiana Jones and Jurassic Park movies). They ratchet up tension with a war of words and an incredible set of double-crossing twists rather than relying on cheap violence and constant explosions. It’s a breath of fresh air in a current movie landscape that hasn’t offered a single other thinking person’s movie so far this year. Amid a flood of ultraviolent horror movies and ultraviolent thrillers, it’s a movie aimed squarely at mature adults, who should be richly rewarded for the efforts they put into guessing the plot’s outcome.

BLACK BAG also has an interesting depiction of marriage. George and Kathryn say they will literally do anything to save each other from harm and are talked about by other characters as a rare, longtime monogamous married couple who keep the fires burning red-hot on the home front. The movie makes marital bonds and commitment glamorous and sexy, although one of the couple’s fellow spy friends says, “Ah, the joys of not having children,” to them about their relationship at one point.

BLACK BAG is a psychologically exciting movie for adults, with restrained violence (just one big explosion) and two cutaways from the lead married couple in their bedroom. However, the movie is littered with some strong foul language throughout and includes cases of infidelity and lying by supporting characters. So, BLACK BAG should only be viewed by adults with extreme caution.