Unzipping the Black Bag...

Over the weekend I took myself on a solo theatre date to watch Steven Soderbergh's latest movie, Black Bag. Usually, after watching a movie I am pretty decisive about my thoughts on it, but it took me a while to figure out how I feel about it. And therefore, I feel like that might be a bad thing—it just didn't knock my socks off! And I love a spy movie. Let's unpack:

It's a tight 94 minute run time, which was refreshing in a time of movies actually taking forever to play out. Black Bag is nice and neat. It follows a small but mighty ensemble cast: Michael Fassbender, Cate Blanchett, Pierce Brosnan, etc. as spies in London. When George's (Fassbender) wife, Kathryn (Blanchett), is suspected of treason, he faces the ultimate test—is he loyal to his wife, or his country?

One of the real standouts for me was the great soundtrack. Soderbergh reunites with David Holmes from Ocean's franchise, and both the original score and the needle drops throughout are really solid. I would 100% follow George on Spotify. He plays Piero Piccioni's Easy Lovers while in the kitchen. Swoon. 

My other favourite part of this movie was definitely the humour. I think the script was really solid, which it needed to be as a dialogue-based film. It's peak dry, British humour that I so adore, and it seemed to pan well with American audiences (I watched it in Brooklyn), with lots of laughs in the theatre. Clarissa (Marisa Abela) was my favourite character. Her remarks really disrupted the stoicism that the rest of the characters embodied.

Everyone is dressed to the nines—there's some glorious suiting and every just looks so rich and fabulous in an understated way—I'm obsessed with James' (Regé-Jean Page) asymmetrically buttoned waistcoat. It's a smart, sexy, and classy movie. But, that being said, I just cannot picture Cate Blanchett as a brunette! That long brown hair on her just seemed so wrong!

Visually, there's a great kind of earthy colour palette going on. Lots of blues and greys and greens and browns. The whole package is very neat and pleasing to the eye. However, there's some weird lens effects a la The Last Showgirl. Throughout Black Bag, there's plenty of halation that I frankly found distracting and makes me want to take my shirtsleeve to the lens. Occasionally, the depth of field is weird, and perhaps Soderbergh was being a little experimental with some shots, but it leaves me feeling a little arms-length. The limited nature and intimacy of Black Bag as a character/dialogue driven movie also made it seem like a lower budget production. Which it isn't—the budget was $50-60 million—and maybe that went to the stacked cast, and deservedly so, with satisfying performances from everyone.

I will say appreciate its understated-ness and reliance on dialogue. There's only one gun fired throughout the whole movie, and it's a spy movie! It reminds me a lot of the end of a Poirot or Miss Marpole episode when they sit down the whole cast/suspects and go through the clues that led them to their verdict. In that way, Black Bag could potentially be a good play. That being said, I initially found it hard to feel immersed in their world, as the pacing was a little odd. The third act is when all the reveals and exposition occurs. I love a nothing happens movie, and this is quite like that. I can appreciate what Soderbergh et al are doing here, but I just don't think it stuck the landing.

Maybe everyone is just too cool that it's hard to feel as emotionally involved or connected to the world as I would like to be. Or, maybe that's just George and Kathryn's personality. In a world fascinated with interesting relationship dynamics (e.g. Challengers), this is funnily enough like a pro-monogamy piece. Black Bag is a test of their relationship, but the viewers aren't really given much to root for. Everyone else thinks they're the “perfect couple”, but nothing is demonstrated to the audience to sink their teeth into. I think the trailer made it seem like a grander movie than it turned out to be. 

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