“If you always have the perfect excuse for lying, why should you ever say the truth?” With this question only half in the joke, the characters from Steven Soderbergh's agent thriller are “Black Bag – double game“Pretty much described: The new film by the Oscar-winning“ Ocean's Eleven ”director is poor in action, but rich-extremely elegant-excitement! The scenario, both narrated and visually highly attractive, is a lot of fun – especially because of the crackling energy between the sexy stars Cate Cate Blanchett (“Tár”) and Michael Fassbender (“The Killer”). The two embody the spouses George and Kathryn Woodhouse living in London, who work in different capacity for the state secret service SIS led by Arthur Stieglitz (Pierce Brosnan). However, there is currently an alarm mood.
Because a strictly secret computer program called Severus developed by the British has reached Russian hands, which could potentially result in the death of thousands. While Kathryn tries to bring back Severus in the field, George is commissioned by his superior Philip Meacham (Gustaf Skarsgård) to identify a mole in his own ranks. Clarissa Dubose (Marisa Abela), Freddie Smalls (Tom Burke), James Stokes (REGE-JEAN PAGE), Zoe Vaughan (Naomie Harris)-and Georges own wife. While he invites all five candidates to a dinner together, he fears that he may have to choose his country and love for Kathryn between loyalty …
George Woodhouse (Michael Fassbender) is under pressure – his superior Arthur Stieglitz (Pierce Brosnan) finally wants to see results when looking for the leak.
The focus of “Black Bag” is three agents pairs who meet at the beginning at a dinner party. First of all, this serves us to explore the individual characters as well as their relationships. In this way, the story is brought into the aisles as elegantly as it is entertaining. Before that, however, we watch the host how he competently prepared the opulent food. We will witness how he mixes a truth serum under the sauce, at least he quickly warns his wife. A little later, this special ingredient will not only lead to heated word battles – but also to a hand on the table through which a steak knife is rammed.
In the further course of the pleasantly tightly presented action, all six figures have enough screen time and are further developed individually. However, the focus remains on George, who finds a cinema ticket (!) In Kathryn's waste bin, which increasingly makes him doubt its loyalty and motives. This turn, which is surprising for himself, makes him monitor Kathryn with the (not entirely voluntary) help of IT expert Clarissa by satellite. Within a short time, this sequence increases to the narratively intensive and staged most of the most subtle and withdrawn work presented over long distances.
Focused on the most important
The actual core is the relationship of the pair, which is brilliantly mimmed by Fassbender and Blanchett, who picks up speed parallel to the slowly but surely escalating Severus situation. Until the satisfactory finale, we are unsure whether the affection between your characters is really real or at least one person, but potentially even even damn well from both sides. Who goes back here? And from what motives? Is Kathryn actually the traitor and let her husband run in the open knife? Or did he look through her supposed game for a long time and pursue his very own plan? Is the fatal laps that ends with the otherwise so infallible championship spy in the course of its work? Or was this possibly only calculated with foresight?
In “Black Bag” there is a lot of vague – for example how exactly this ominous computer program works or how the five names comprised list of agents that are suspected of the Hochbrain was created. But that's okay. Because this information is not really important. The explanations would require many words and the film already largely consists of dialogues-whereby the word change written by “Jurassic Park” author David Koepp has always been extremely pointed and grinded.
George is worried that in the end his own wife Kathryn (Cate Blanchett) could turn out to be the traitor you were looking for.
Not only what you say, but also how you do this, express a lot about the individual people. In many situations, the George played by Michael Fassbender, which plays ambivalent, only gives only the price, which is absolutely necessary, and then as neutral as possible. He prefers to let the others speak – always in the apparently not too absurd hope that they could talk about head and collar while analyzing them with an incorruptible look. There is little action for an agent thriller. Actually even in two short scenes: one car explodes once and the other time a weapon is fired in a closed room. However, this does not mean that “Black Bag” would otherwise be without excitement. The opposite is the case.
Even without chase and shootouts, Soderbergh succeeds in conveying an enormous feeling of urgency. The clashes are usually not physically, but mentally or verbally, which is simply a lot of fun thanks to the acting performance of everyone involved – including Pierce Brosnan, which is a arrogant intelligence director.
Little action, great pleasure
In addition to Koepp's cleverly structured script, the stylish camera work (from Soderbergh, under the pseudonym Peter Andrews), the efficient cut (also Soderbergh, here as Mary Ann Bernard) and the often unexpected score of Soderbergh master composer David Holmes contributed a lot to the success. The scenes are also a poem: it is almost impossible to sitting on the extensive, stylishly elegantly elegantly furnished apartment of the Woodhouses, the hyper -modern office and the atmospheric lake with boathouse.
So “Black Bag” is a rather small film within the spy thriller genre-not a spectacle, not a blockbuster, or a film with “Wow” effects. Fans, rather calmer, but all the more smarter -built works that slowly but surely pull the ground under their feet with them (and with them), but should very well know how to appreciate him.
Conclusion: hardly any action, but the more scalpel-sharp word battles! Steven Soderbergh succeeded in such an outstanding agent thriller who not only scores with a top-class cast, but also looks very high. After a few more mediocre work, the master director is finally presented here again in absolute top form behind the Oscar clearer “Traffic-The Power of the Cartel”.