Black Bag (15)

George Woodhouse is an operative working for the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), who learns from colleague Meacham that there is a mole in the ranks. This double agent is responsible for stealing a software program named Severus and George must neutralise the threat. A five-strong list of suspects includes George's wife Kathryn St Jean, Colonel James Stokes and his girlfriend, NCSC psychiatrist Dr Zoe Vaughan, Freddie Smalls and his girlfriend, NCSC communications expert Clarissa Dubose.

LondonNet Film Review

Black Bag (15) Film Review from LondonNet

Black Bag is a dying breed: an elegantly constructed spy thriller with deeply satisfying narrative kinks that slowly feeds big-name actors into the emotional wringer and relies almost entirely on incendiary dialogue to inflict mortal wounds. David Koepp’s script restricts the pyrotechnics to one plot-driven explosion and a few meaningful pulls of a trigger. “This ends with someone in the boot of a car,” warns one spy. Director Steven Soderbergh obliges with shots of a vehicle driving down a country lane towards a fishing lake, captured from behind…

In the high-stakes world of global espionage, a black bag is a clandestine operation to gather valuable intelligence, which may involve bypassing security measures to gain access to privileged information. Characters in Soderbergh’s picture are trained to lie and deceive and they run black bags on each other. Loyalty to your country comes above everything, but when a target turns out to be the person you married, every victory is also a potential loss. Michael Fassbender and Cate Blanchett are impeccably cast as husband and wife, who both work for the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) and privately admit they would defy orders and kill for each other. They could be fibbing. The vow is tested as cogs of an ingeniously twisty plot whir into action.

Soderbergh opens with an unbroken shot around a packed London club to quickly establish betrayal close to home. “Some things really are best kept under the rug,” observes Fassbender’s master of polygraph analysis. Black Bag repeatedly pulls the rug from under us and the resulting disorientation is delightful. High-ranking NCSC officer George Woodhouse (Fassbender) receives confirmation from colleague Meacham (Gustaf Skarsgard) of a mole in the ranks. The duplicitous double agent is responsible for stealing NCSC’s prototype cyberweapon Severus.

A five-strong list of suspects includes George’s wife Kathryn St Jean (Blanchett), newly promoted Colonel James Stokes (Rege-Jean Page) and his girlfriend NSCS psychiatrist Dr Zoe Vaughan (Naomie Harris), Freddie Smalls (Tom Burke) and his girlfriend NSCS communications specialist Clarissa Dubose (Marisa Abela). To expose a traitor, George invites the suspects to an impromptu dinner party and laces one of the dishes with a generous dose of truth serum. “What’s on the menu?” Kathryn asks her husband. “Fun and games,” he coolly responds.

Black Bag slowly tightens thumb screws on the characters, who cannot be trusted to say what they mean or mean what they say. Fassbender and Blanchett are seductive and slippery while Abela makes an indelible impact with her full-throttle performance as a pawn in George’s mind games. Soderbergh retains a firm grip on the glorious displays of mental gymnastics to steadily crank up the suspense, bookmarked by two charged conversations around a dining room table. Loose tongues spill secrets and some truths are hard to stomach.

– Jo Planter