By Seth Lukas Hynes
Black Bag
Starring Cate Blanchett and Michael Fassbender
M
4/5
Black Bag is a taut, brilliantly-written espionage thriller from director Stephen Soderbergh.
George (Michael Fassbender), a British intelligence agent, must investigate his wife, fellow agent Kathryn (Cate Blanchett), after their department suspects a rat.
Black Bag’s political Macguffin of a software weapon falling into the wrong hands is secondary to the fascinating web of intrigue between its characters.
Soderbergh is widely known as an actor’s director, and much of Black Bag plays out through tense, scintillating verbal battles that lay secrets bare and push relationships and loyalty to the breaking point.
The dialogue handily treads that fine line of being complex and interesting without being complicated.
Resentment, infidelity and deception bubble beneath the refined surface, the latter shown through some beautiful cinematography, and Marisa Abela is the stand-out supporting actor as Clarissa, a kind young woman with an unstable, merciless edge.
Fassbender and Blanchett convey a calm, confident precision together, and are the pinnacles of a very hot cast; it’s refreshing to see a film in which older actors of around the same age (Blanchett is 55 and Fassbender is 47) get to be sexy, instead of the old-and-young pairing so common in Hollywood.
Black Bag is a short, focused, sexy and cleverly-written thriller driven by exceptional dialogue and performances, and is playing in most Victorian cinemas.
