Michael Fassbender and Cate Blanchett are impossibly glamorous as two spies in love.
PLOT: A British spy (Michael Fassbender), working for an MI5-like group, is tasked with monitoring down a traitor who has allegedly offered a tool that might set off a nuclear meltdown to a Russian dissident. Issues are difficult when considered one of his chief suspects seems to be his beloved spouse (Cate Blanchett).
REVIEW: When you learn Steven Soderbergh’s annual “Seen; Read” lists, you’ll be aware that amongst his various tastes in movie, he has a selected fondness for spy motion pictures – with the George Lazenby James Bond film, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, lengthy famous as considered one of his favourites. He’s been toying with doing a spy film for years, with him and George Clooney having famously nearly made their very own model of The Man from U.N.C.L.E. Now, Soderbergh lastly will get his probability, his film owes much less to the cinematic world of 007 than his personal, fashionable Oceans’ Eleven, blended with a wholesome dose of sixties spy thrillers within the vein of The Ipcress File.
Black Bag takes an attention-grabbing method in that it facilities round a plot that might have been lifted from a Bond film, the place hundreds of lives cling within the stability, however pulls it off with little or no on-screen carnage. Fassbender’s George Woodhouse is a extra cerebral spy within the mould of a John Le Carre character, sporting an impeccable wardrobe and Harry Palmer-esque glasses. His mastery of the spy recreation comes from his uncanny skill to take aside his foes and use their weaknesses to his benefit. Fassbender performs him as chilly and calculating, with him totally unwilling to show any sense of weak spot. He’s fastidious about every little thing, together with his wardrobe, with him at one level instantly altering out of a crisp costume shirt when the tiniest drop of wine winds up on considered one of his cuffs. But, he has a big weak spot of his personal, being his all-consuming love for his spouse, Kathryn (Cate Blanchett), who, like him, works within the extremely categorized “Black Bag” part, together with her below Pierce Brosnan’s George Smiley-like character, Arthur Stieglitz.
Along with his spouse, Woodhouse’s suspects embrace Tom Burke’s hard-drinking Freddie – his finest buddy within the company, in addition to Freddie’s a lot youthful mistress, Marisa Abel’s Clarissa, whose feelings make her one thing of a legal responsibility. Then there’s Regé-Jean Web page as Stokes, a fast-rising agent who lacks a conscience, and his lover, Naomi Harris’s firm shrink, Zoe, who has entry to everybody’s secrets and techniques. The sport right here, as written by common Soderbergh collaborator David Koepp, is for Woodhouse to determine who the within man (or girl) is.
It helps that Fassbender and Blanchett have nice chemistry, and they’re a dazzlingly-stylish couple, each of whom, by necessity, have turn out to be specialists at maintaining secrets and techniques from one another. Blanchett’s Kathryn runs slightly hotter than George, together with her extra emotional, and affected by a little bit of burnout as a result of an op that went fallacious, which is barely calmly hinted at early within the movie. Working a taut ninety minutes, Soderbergh’s crafted a twisty spy romp, though regardless that it facilities round a very Bond-like MacGuffin, the tone is saved playful, with the thrills being extra character-based than the rest.
It’s pushed alongside by a propulsive, jazzy rating by Soderbergh common David Holmes, and it quantities to one of many director’s extra entertaining current efforts. Whereas his ghost thriller Presence may need been a bit too cerebral for many audiences, with Black Bag, he’s working in a extra mainstream mode. When you appreciated his Ocean’s Trilogy, you’ll probably get an enormous kick out his spy flick. Fassbender’s Woodhouse is such an attention-grabbing antihero that maybe a return to his tackle spycraft may not be out of the query have been this Focus Options launch to do nicely.
