Black Bag

4 outta 5

Black Bag is a spy thriller that doesn’t go very hard on any spectacle “spy movie” moments, and this film even has a James Bond in it. It is more about the lies that people in espionage tell each other. There isn’t exactly any firearms going off except for a brief and important moment in the finale. It has the same husband vs. wife spy bit as in Mr. and Mrs. Smith but these two know they’re spies and so lying to each other is part of the job. Black Bag is definitely a bit on the slow side, but performance moments and reveals that occur to make this a compelling, slow burn of a spy mystery.

George (Michael Fassbender) and Kathryn (Cate Blanchett) are married spies who work for the same agency. When George is told that someone in their agency, including potentially his wife, could be a double-agent selling a deadly piece of technology, George has to sniff them out. His coworker spies are also entangled in interpersonal relationships, Stokes (Regé-Jean Page) is dating the psychologist, Vaughan (Naomie Harris), and Clarissa (Marisa Abela) is dating Freddie (Tom Burke), and George suspects them all. He hosts them at a dinner party with their food laced with truth serum, which does expose a lot of nasty feelings but not the culprit. When one of George’s associates turns up dead, and more evidence pointing to Kathryn’s wife, the head of George’s agency, Arthur (Pierce Brosnan), wants the leak plugged in any way possible.

As much as this is a spy movie, it is also about toxic relationships between spy coworkers. When George invites them for a dinner party, he pumps them with truth drugs and eventually Vaughan and Stokes devolve into bickering and Clarissa accuses Freddie of infidelity. As they’re all professionally trained liars, it is impossible to find out which is telling the truth, even when they’re hooked up to the polygraph “lie detector” test. It gets especially intense as George’s wife Kathryn is a prime suspect, so even something like a movie stub ticket in the trash bin becomes a damning clue. Blanchett plays Kathryn as an enigma, so every line she has is layered with double meaning. Is she being lovingly teasing towards her husband, or is she hiding something? Eventually, George does admit to spying on his wife, however, as a method of protection. It is sort of consensual spying to make sure she stays alive. Although when he starts following her closely, it looks like her lies are about to collapse.

Page as the spy dating the psychologist gets particularly snarky with his paramour, like when she is supposed to be psychoanalyzing him, but he keeps bringing up their relationship. When they break up, he quickly dismisses their fling and is focused on what she knew about secret operations. Harris as the psychologist swings between coy misdirection or being mentally unstable herself (which she says isn’t a crime). Abela as Clarissa enjoys stating that she likes older men more than young men because the young men turn out to be incredibly boring, but when she gets very angry against Fredie while under the influence of the truth serum, her response is bonkers. Burke as Fredie is very cynical, and even at one point revealing that George actually spied on his own father. Which makes George even less likable as if he could turn on his own dad then what else could he do to just his coworkers.

The characters bounce between likable and lying, as one would expect from a bunch of spies dating each other. Fassbender as George has very subtle acting that shows that there is a bunch going on underneath the surface and some funny, pithy comebacks. And also, he seems like any moment can explode into violence, like when he is on a fishing boat with Stokes that feels like a “take the guy out a boat to bump them off” scene but what George does is unexpected. Seeing a former movie spy here with Brosnan as the head of the agency is trippy, it’s as if James Bond is yelling at his subordinates to get the piece of deadly technology. He also has a great moment at the end when the conspiracy is revealed, and he reacts to revelations of the various twists.

The actual technological gadget at the centre of Black Bag is pretty cool, it turns out to be a device that could melt down nuclear reactors which could potentially be used against Russia, as a way to “stop the war,” which is an oblique reference to the war in Ukraine. There really isn’t any action in the film, aside from an intense moment involving a drone strike. But the climax once again brings back the main characters in a deadly stakes version of the dinner game which is a cool way to reprise their dinner from the start of the film. Black Bag is a bit more about how people lie to each other, but it does have some neat spy movie twists. It’s a quieter spy movie, but it has a great payoff.