The 1934 mystery classic The Thin Man famously climaxes with the married heroes - amateur sleuths Nick and Nora Charles - throwing a dinner party designed to flush out the person responsible for the murder they've spent the movie attempting to solve. Director Steven Soderbergh and writer David Koepp draw heavily from The Thin Man for their spy thriller Black Bag. Their movie similarly climaxes with a tense dinner party, one which resolves itself almost exactly like its '30s predecessor, but it also opens with a dinner party, one purposely designed to set its guests on edge.
The soirée in question is thrown by George (Michael Fassbender), a very reserved British spy employed by an unnamed government service that for all intents and purposes, is MI5. He's curated the guest list without input from his wife Kathryn (Cate Blanchett), who also happens to be a spook. The guests are the chief suspects in the theft of a top secret MacGuffin that could lead to the outbreak of WWIII, as is always the case with such things. They also all happen to be co-workers of George and Kathryn. There's surveillance expert Clarissa (Marisa Abela), psychiatrist Zoe (Naomie Harris), and agents Freddy (Tom Burke) and James (Regé-Jean Page). Rather awkwardly for George, his wife is also a suspect.
George uses the initial dinner party to subtly alert his guests to the fact that he's onto them, even if he doesn't know exactly who he's onto. Sandwiched between the bookending dinner parties we get a lot of classic spy craft, with the various parties having clandestine meetings and using underhanded tactics to snoop on each other. The plot is as nonsensical as any James Bond movie, but Koepp's script makes it seem plausible. The problem with many spy thrillers, even those of a popcorn variety, is that they tend to get too hung up on their plots, and it's easy to lose track of what we're supposed to be invested in. Koepp, one of the most experienced screenwriters working in Hollywood, keeps it all nice and simple here, so we never find ourselves scratching our heads.
The movie falls somewhere between the fantasy of the Bond franchise and grittier British espionage dramas like The Spy Who Came In from the Cold, The Ipcress File and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, with Fassbender channelling the downbeat protagonists of all three of those classics (all while sporting Harry Palmer's trademark black-rimmed NHS spectacles). The plot is convincingly grounded, but we also get the glamour of more fantastical spy movies, with a ridiculously good-looking cast clad in impeccable fits. Soderbergh essentially does for the spy thriller here as he did for the heist movie with his Ocean's films; Black Bag offers us the chance to hang out with some very attractive and charismatic actors as they flirt and finagle their way through a breezy plot. I don't mean this as a slight, but Black Bag is the perfect movie to watch on a plane: it's an easy, unchallenging watch, but one that has enough drama to draw you in for its duration.
The film's title refers to operations that secret agents can't discuss with anyone else, and the movie cleverly uses this idea for an exploration of how difficult it must be for two such people to be in a relationship. "Sorry hun, black bag," is a convenient get out clause that allows for all sorts of infidelitous possibilities. Fassbender and Blanchett are two actors who can say a lot with a blank expression, making them ideal choices to portray George and Kathryn. Every time they answer their other half's question with a suspicious answer, we half expect them to do the Larry David eyeballing schtick in the hopes that one of them might break.
Every cast member is having a ball here. Along with Harris we get another Bond alum in Pierce Brosnan, now old enough to find himself playing the M role (Brosnan got his start in The Long Good Friday, another movie that may have had an influence on Black Bag; Blanchett is certainly channelling Helen Mirren.) In Fassbender, Burke and Jean-Page we have three actors all giving performances that might be construed as come and get me pleas to the 007 producers, with three very different takes on how that currently vacant role might be played. But it's Abela who stands out most here, playing perhaps the smartest cookie of all the film's very brainy characters. She gets the most fun role, a flirtatious young woman who seems to enjoy the paranoid world of spydom, and she keeps us, and George, guessing about her motivations.
At just 90 minutes, Black Bag gets in and out like a secret agent stealing a hard drive from some shady facility. It's a fun time with enough espionage to keep us engaged in its plot, but it's the quality of the cast and their understanding of the tone Soderbergh wants to strike here that makes Black Bag really tick. Brian de Palma fans will enjoy an anecdote attributed to George's past, but which is clearly lifted from that director's real life.
Directed by: Steven Soderbergh
Starring: Michael Fassbender, Cate Blanchett, Rege-Jean Page, Marisa Abela, Naomie Harris, Pierce Brosnan, Tom Burke
