Black Bag: Your work life is only as good as your marriage

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Rob Ryan

Black Bag is a term that refers to how much information it's characters are allowed to keep secret in order to not jeopardise national and International security, when you're a spy that's pled your allegiance to a certain government, there's only so much you can give away when you are finally able to go home to your loved one's, if any question arises regarding what documents you are traveling with or where you are going with said documents, the only answer deemed acceptable by your superiors is "Black Bag" which presents it's characters with an almost impossible dilemma, how can you have a relationship with one another while still working in the same professional field? How can you have a healthy relationship knowing that eventually there is going to be a lack of trust from both parties, how is a relationship supposed to flourish when the profession requires as little transparency between the couple in their professional lives as much as humanly possible? For George and Katherine (Michael Fassbender and Cate Blanchett) They know that the answer simply is....It Can't

Which is why they share everything together behind close doors, no stone is left unturned, if one has to lie to protect the other, they will do that and if they had to kill for the exact same reason, then they will kill, even on secret missions, they tell each other all of the details once just to make sure that circle of trust is properly intact. Which is why George is perplexed to learn that Katherine is a possible suspect of being a traitor to her country.

The film begins on a Friday night at a London night club where George is told by a fellow spy (Gustaf Skarsgard) that one of their own is a possible traitor that plans to partake in a chemical attack that will cause a meltdown at a Russian nuclear plant, thus causing political uprising and potentially overthrowing Putin and ending the war in Ukraine, George is given a list of possible suspects including his wife and is given a week to find out who the traitor is.

The four other suspects are both couples as well as his closest friends and associates so George invites them to dinner and lays the ground work for psychoanalysing them and eventually catching the culprit out, the couple include therapist Dr. Zoe Vaughn (Naomie Harris) and her boyfriend Col James Stokes (Rege-Jean Page) a sane and rational couple compared to Freddie Smalls (Tom Burke) and his girlfriend Clarissa (Marisa Abela) who during dinner, confronts her boyfriend for seeing other women leading to Freddie to berate Clarissa for making everything about her childhood tragedy of growing up in a broken home, I will leave you to discover the payoff for that argument for yourself.

With the seed planted after dinner, George can get to work in his week long mission in catching the traitor, however, the informant who informed George of his findings is killed thanks to having his drink poisoned and throughout the corse of the week that the film takes place in, George becomes more convinced that Katherine may be behind the conspiracy much to his sock and amazement but is there more going on then meets the eye?

Black Bag like a lot of the best films in the genre is less about action and globetrotting and is more about character and behaviour, the film is less interested in the politics of it's real world circumstances and is more interested in how the personal and professional clash and the potential consequence's that come with it both at home and abroad, How one couple is able to have the best of both worlds, and how all their friends are unable to maintain their love for one another due to a lack of trust, transparency or a clash in ideology. The film is ultimately a character study, all told within a limited and minimal place and time, in just one week and with a few locations but one that only increases intrigue as it goes along thanks to Steven Soderbergh's tight and confident direction and David Koepp's witty and snappy screenplay (who both helmed the previously reviewed Presence which was a complete misfire in my opinion, nice to know they still got some talent left)

The film is also an actors movie, where every performance is distinct and every character is memorable, Abel's Clarissa and her obvious lust for George and older men in general garners some of the movie's biggest laugh's and even Pierce Brosnan's small part as their commanding officer is a welcome inclusion right down to his delivery of "you son of a bitch" This movie could easily work as a play with the exact same cast and it would have the same effect.

This movie harkens back to a time when spy movies where less about fighting a bad guy and his goons in a underground lair and more about people who in the terms of their world and the terms of their profession are all flawed and complex, they know to a certain extent what they do in the name of patriotism is often morally dubious but they all partake and often risk their lives and careers anyway if nothing else, for the thrill of it. It's often said that you have to be a psychopath in order to become a spy but Black Bag makes the case that actually you have to a completely devoted lover in order to become one. Case in point, your ability to spy is only as good as your marriage.