“Black Bag” is a spy movie with no car chases or shootouts or action sequences. It’s probably more representative of what real spies are like. As for the title, it’s a phrase used when the characters are asked a question they can’t answer (e.g. “Where are you going?” “Who are you meeting?”). It’s shorthand for, “I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you.”
“Black Bag” stars Cate Blanchett and Michael Fassbender as a married couple who are very devoted to each other and the British intelligence agency they do highly classified work for — she in the field, he at headquarters in London as a high-ranking snoop. But when they discover there’s a mole in the organization, he is handed a list of suspects (including her) and tasked with uncovering whoever it is.
To do so, he must interrogate and discern which of his colleagues has been lying. So he invites four of them, made up of two dating couples, to dinner, where Fassbender cooks a curry with some sort of truth potion in it — and warns Blanchett not to eat it because he’s confident his wife would never betray him or the agency. Combined with the wine he serves, the guests get loose and talkative, but never in a way that reveals anything to us other than that one of them is cheating on another. Only Blanchett and Fassbender begin to understand what they’re dealing with.
The MacGuffin in “Black Bag” is something called Severus, software that would be dangerous if it fell into the hands of the Russians. Frankly, it doesn’t matter what Severus is. We only need pay attention to the subjects being dissected by the two leads in order to reveal the traitor in their midst.
The first half of “Black Bag” plays out very slowly, as if based on a boring John le Carré novel. But about midway through, director Steven Soderbergh and writer David Koepp throw a switch of some kind and turn it into almost a drawing room mystery, the kind where the detective gathers everybody together at the end and reveals who the killer is.
Blanchett is wonderful (as always) playing a sultry woman who’s very good at her job and in a very loving relationship with her husband. Fassbender matches her step for step as a man who gives nothing away and displays no emotions to anyone but his wife. The other four agency operatives are played by Marisa Abela, Naomie Harris, Regé-Jean Page, and Tom Burke, any of whom could be the turncoat. And if you ever wondered what would happen if James Bond retired from being a secret agent and moved into upper management, you’ll be happy to see Pierce Brosnan show up as everyone else’s boss.
Koepp has already proven himself to be one of today’s best screenwriters, with titles like “Jurassic Park,” “The Paper,” “Panic Room,” “Mission: Impossible,” and the underrated Ricky Gervais movie “Ghost Town” on his resume. He and Soderbergh also made another movie I liked, “Kimi,” in 2022 (my review is here).
Like Severus, I’m glad his screenplay for “Black Bag” didn’t fall into the hands of someone who would use it for evil purposes by turning it into a streaming miniseries, dragging out the story over eight slow-moving episodes.
Fortunately, Soderbergh (who also edited) did it in a tight 93 minutes, so I’m giving “Black Bag” a 7.5 out of 10.