Movie Review: Black Bag

4 stars out of 5

Since splashing onto the movie scene with 1989’s Sex, Lies, and Videotape, director Steven Soderbergh above all else seems to choose whatever project will be fun for him at a given time, regardless of genre. For Black Bag, he sinks his teeth into an old-fashioned drawing room whodunit. (“Someone in this room has committed a murder, and before daybreak I intend to find out precisely who it was.”) Hired to craft such a classic cinematic tale is one of the most dependable big-league screenwriters of the past 20 years, David Koepp (Spider-Man, Indiana Jones, Mission: Impossible, Jurassic Park). Armed with a top-notch cast, the result is a sharp, clean, good time at the movies.

Michael Fassbender and Cate Blanchett are married British agents. He’s fussy, she’s sultry. They’re open with each other — except on black-bag (top secret) assignments. For example, a colleague lets him know that one of five co-workers is going to leak a very dangerous MacGuffin to the enemy. One of those co-workers: Blanchett.

Fassbender sets out to find the traitor, who may very well be his wife. Instead of a drawing room, he arranges a dinner party with Fassbender’s right-hand man James (Regé-Jean Page of Bridgerton), Freddie (Tom Burke who was Orson Welles in Mank) who was passed over for that spot, Freddie’s girlfriend Clarissa (Marisa Abela a.k.a. Teen Talk Barbie) who has a crush on Fassbender, and staff psychiatrist Zoe (Naomie Harris, Moneypenny in recent Bonds) who has heard a secret or two. Not invited is their boss Pierce Brosnan, so old that I didn’t recognize him at first.

Steven Soda-bread and Koepp blend sexual tension, satellites, humor, poison, and a polygraph machine into a neat little spy thriller. Bonus points for Squeeze’s “Up the Junction” on the soundtrack. If you’d like to know a little more of the plot before deciding to watch, I’d tell you but… black bag.