Black Bag, a delightful spy thriller

In Black Bag Cate Blanchette and Michael Fassbender are married spies in British intelligence. They spy on each other, on their work colleagues, and on the world. They’re chess masters manipulating the players and the moves on a life and death global chess board.

Black Bag, from director Steven Soderbergh, had a prim but deadly old timey feel. The drama played out with beautiful, stylish people doing mysterious and secret things that could either destroy or save. It was sophisticated in a way you don’t see much anymore.

To set to story in motion, George (Michael Fassbender) goes to see fellow spy Philip (Gustaf Skarsgård) in a basement nightclub. Philip says their operation has been compromised and the traitor is one of the people on a list of 5 names that he gives George. One of those names is George’s wife Kathryn (Cate Blanchett).

George is a known wizard with a polygraph machine, but he’s pretty good as a human lie detector, too. His first move in the investigation is to invite all the suspects to dinner at his posh home. He does the cooking. He might have put a little something extra in the food for investigative reasons. Kathryn slinks around looking sexy.

The two couples he invites are James (Regé-Jean Page), an arrogant fellow who has been receiving sex and therapy from psychiatrist Zoe (Naomie Harris). Freddie (Tom Burke) drinks too much and has a kind of paranoid relationship with Clarissa (Marisa Abela).

There were two scenes with these six people over the dining room table in this film and I thought they were the best scenes. The quips, the secrets revealed, the exchanges between them was so well done and compelling.

I especially liked Clarissa. After a heated exchange about fidelity (there was a lot about fidelity among spies in this film) with Freddie at the dinner party, Clarissa stabbed him with a steak knife and pinned his hand to the table. Plus she was snarky and had some of the best one-liners.

There were other spies around. Arthur Stieglitz (Pierce Brosnan) was the head of the team. There were Russians, secret bank accounts, and software that could make a nuclear reactor melt down. They had to keep the software safe while figuring out who the traitor was.

I found Black Bag a complete delight. The clever and twisty plot, the dialog, the sexy misdeeds of the spies, and the gorgeous cinematography all added up to a very satisfying spy drama. Plus it clocked in at a refreshing 93 minutes.

You can stream this on Peacock.