Trust is Hard to Come By

Film: Black Bag
Format: Streaming video from Peacock on Fire!

As I spend time catching up on several decades of television, I’ve come to realize that I really like a good legal drama. I’m not necessarily keen for cop shows, but give me a bunch of people in a courtroom (aside from the show Suits—I hated Suits), and I’m usually happy to keep watching. This is interesting to me because if you asked me what kind of shows I like, I probably wouldn’t list legal dramas. When it comes to movies, I am much the same way with espionage thrillers. I can’t say it’s a genre/subgenre that I think about a lot, but I’m always really happy to watch a good spy drama. This is relevant, because Black Bag from earlier this year is a very good spy drama.

The key to a good espionage story is essentially the same as a good thriller in general. We have to have multiple possible outcomes. We have to never really be sure of who we can or should trust. Every decision our main character makes needs to feel as if it is potentially lethal, either for themselves or for someone else. Black Bag gives us this with the added drama of the espionage taking place in the context of a marriage and several other relationships.

MI6 agent George Woodhouse (Michael Fassbender) is pulled aside by his boss Meacham (Gustaf Skarsgård) and told that there is a leak in the organization. There are five suspects ,one of whom is Kathryn St. Jean (Cate Blanchett), who happens to be George’s wife. George is a specialist in tracking down who is lying, and rather than immediately start hooking everyone up to a polygraph, he decides instead to host an unusual dinner party. Before the guests arrive, he slips a drug into one of the dishes that will lower their inhibitions; he warns Kathryn off the food.

At the party, a number of things are revealed about our guests, although none seems specifically relevant to who might have leaked important information. We learn that satellite imaging expert Clarissa (Marisa Abela) is in a relationship with managing agent Freddie (Tom Burke), who is cheating on her with an unknown person several times per week. Our other couple is another managing agent James (Regé-Jean Page), who is currently dating Dr. Zoe Vaughan (Naomie Harris), a psychiatrist at the agency. The evening is revealing in a number of ways and ends with Clarissa stabbing Freddie in the hand with a steak knife.

After the party, George discovers some suspicious activity about his wife. He sees a stub for a movie ticket, and also learns that she is headed on a job to an undisclosed, secret location. George pulls a few strings and, using Clarissa’s skill with satellites, discovers that Kathryn has gone to Zurich to meet with a Russian operative, an operative who turns out to be in possession of a computer virus that can cause a meltdown if uploaded into the operating system of a nuclear plant. There is also a new Swiss bank account under the name of one of Kathryn’s aliases that has had a recent influx of cash. Worse, the man that Kathryn has met with is someone who used that gap in satellite surveillance to escape captivity, and now whomever was instrumental in allowing that happen (George and Clarissa in this case) are immediately suspects for being double agents.

Essentially, this sets up the movie for us, and the rest of the film is figuring out exactly how it all plays out and who is doing what.

On the surface, Black Bag is about this computer virus that could be used to create a nuclear accident at any nuclear facility around the world, something that in the wrong hands would quickly become a nightmare of potential terrorist attacks. Below this surface, though, the film is about relationships and how much we are willing to trust another person. How far will George go for his marriage and to protect his wife? How far will Kathryn go once it becomes clear that George may have been set up to take the fall?

Black Bag isn’t an action-filled film. It’s almost a drawing room drama, with most of the real action happening more mentally than anywhere else. We’re not going to have shootouts or action set pieces of people running all over London, diving through windows, and squealing their car tires around turns taken too fast. No, this is entirely cerebral and about small indications of who might be telling the truth. Eventually, we watch George interrogate four of the suspects (again, leaving out Kathryn), looking for answers. Or is he? Is George actually guilty? Is he looking for someone to take the fall for Kathryn? Or is he looking to make Kathryn take the fall for one reason or another?

Black Bag is smart, and it doesn’t underestimate the intelligence of the audience. It’s the right choice for this kind of film, but it’s also exactly the choice I expect Steven Soderbergh to make.

Why to watch Black Bag: Espionage films that don’t talk down to the audience are always fun.
Why not to watch: No good reason—this is solid all the way through.