Movie Scene: A bag of thrills

Twelve years ago, acclaimed director Steven Soderbergh (certainly one of the most eclectic and interesting voices in cinema), announced his retirement, a retirement which lasted all of a year (at best).

Since then, he’s been cranking out stuff on both TV and the big screen and, with his second feature in a matter of weeks, we have espionage thriller ‘Black Bag.’

The film concerns George (Michael Fassbender) and Katherine (Cate Blanchett), a married couple who also happen to be spies in Britain’s National Cyber Security Centre.

‘Black Bag’ opens with George wandering through a nightclub seeking information on a potential mole who has leaked a weapon to the Russians and is given a list of names to investigate.

However, much to his chagrin, Katherine is on it, along with fellow spies, the boorish Freddie (Tom Burke), tech wiz Clarissa (Maria Abella) and James (Rege Jean-Page) – along with company shrink Zoe (Naomie Harris).

George organises a dinner party with them all as guests and, seeing the fall-out from the night, he sets about investigating who has betrayed the service.

If this is what Soderbergh does when he ‘un-retires’ then he should do it more often.

In a spy world filled with Bourne, Bond and any number of knockoff’s killing and blowing things to hell, Black Bag is a taut, stripped back delight. Once the initial dinner party is over, Katherine asks George what it achieved and he simply says, “The dinner was the rock, now I have to watch the ripples.”

And they fan out over an economic 93-minutes as George investigates each one in turn with the dress sense and horn-rimmed glasses of Harry Palmer and the meticulousness of George Smiley and a chess grandmaster.

Black Bag has a maze of twists and turns that George either manufactures himself or takes full advantage of; his talent as a spymaster is used to brilliant effect as it’s subsequently revealed that he knows secrets about the others and isn’t afraid to use them – not only to regain the weapon but also to prove his wife’s innocence which, thanks to a few tense scenes, is cast into major doubt.

Fans of guns and all-out action are set to be disappointed; I counted only one gun shot in the entire film and a brief explosion is your lot in the action stakes, but Black Bag has more than enough going for it plot-wise in other ways.

Also heavily examined is George and Katherine’s marriage; very much in love, the pair converse with a Bogey and Bacall-type flirtatiousness with ice-cool witty quips. In among the spy stuff, David Koepp’s script asks the question ‘just how far would you go for the one you love and is it possible to love if you’re a spy who lives?’

The on-point set design evokes a ‘60s sheen and everyone, including our own Pierce Brosnan, absolutely brings their A-game.

Throw in regular Soderbergh collaborator David Holmes with an excellent soundtrack and Black Bag offers one of the most stylish, wittiest spy films of the genre.