A sleek thriller revolving around the melodrama of awful people.

George and Kathryn have been happily married for years, despite working in the confines of an intelligence agency. But their careers and lives are at stake when George is tipped off that someone is working against them… and that someone could be his wife.

Directed by Steven Soderbergh (Ocean’s Eleven) Black Bag is a slick espionage thriller featuring a delectable cast. Michael Fassbender (The Killer), Cate Blanchette (redeeming herself since Borderlands), Naomie Harris (No Time to Die), Regé-Jean Page (Dungeons & Dragons). We even have an ex-Bond in there, with Pierce Brosnan. The film sits at a comfortable 93 minutes run time, loaded with enough intrigue to keep you invested. It doesn’t feel too long, or too obvious.

The trailer betrays a fast-paced thriller, not unlike a Dalton-era Bond film, or maybe a Bourne movie. The reality is that Black Bag is a more personal, enclosed affair between the main six characters. George Woodhouse (Fassbender) is a scrupulous senior intelligence officer, who we quickly learn would sell out his own father to maintain order and the truth. A contact gives him the details on a dangerous object known as Severus, that has the potential to cause a great calamity. Moreover, that there is a mole in his organization and he has only a week to expose them.

Despite a contemporary setting, there is something extremely 70s about the film. In a good way. It is a muted, understated experience. The way Fassbender’s bespectacled George sleuths around, reminds us of Michael Caine in his heyday (1965’s The Ipcress File), or the late-Gene Hackman in The Conversation. Spending time fishing so he can simply think.
Our first piece of drama is a dinner table scene, with the six principle characters playing a game purely for George to detect their mannerisms. Page, Harris, Marisa Abela, Tom Burke, all bounce and rebound comments with wit and cynicism very well. There’s a great sense of chemistry: these people work together; have relationships together; but because of the nature of their work those relationships barely function.

The film is well-paced, albeit slower than the trailer might suggest to some; it isn’t obsessed with twists and doesn’t throw one every time it needs intrigue. It slowly drips feeds the audience with information. A clue found here. A statement said in confidence there. It might not be the most complex of whodunnits (generally the audience should narrow the suspects down to one or two fairly early), which does hamper the mystery a bit. But the “how” all the pieces fit, and the journey to the destination itself, make it rewarding enough.

It isn’t dry either, like a lot of “realistic” spy movies are. This is almost entirely down to the script’s wry dialogue and pincer-sharp delivery from the performers. There’s a lot of levity in how they take bites out of each other. Plus, Blanchette and Fassbender make an excellent couple, especially when one of them could be betraying the other at a moment’s notice.

Overall it was a delightful time of intrigue and deception. Maybe not film of the year, but you can certainly do a lot worse. Good performances all around, beautifully shot scenes of lavish and sterile interiors.