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‘Black Bag’ Review: Steven Soderbergh Dashes Off a Smart, Sexy Thriller About a Spy Couple With Trust Issues
Michael Fassbender and Cate Blanchett are British agents worried the other could be lying in a riveting genre exercise that respects our intelligence.
Heading up an impeccable cast are Michael Fassbender and Cate Blanchett, who play George Woodhouse and Kathryn St. Jean, a Nick and Nora-like couple of spies so deeply, foolishly in love that they find it inconceivable that the mole in the British intelligence agency for which they both work could well be their spouse. The brilliance of “Black Bag,” which marks the director’s third project with David Koepp (after “Kimi” and “Presence”), isn’t just the way it puts the stakes between this particular couple on a much level, where tens of thousands of lives hinge on what they choose to hide from one another, but how an effective spy movie can simultaneously say so much about human relationships. “Black Bag” is a reminder of just how enjoyable Soderbergh can be when he’s riffing on well-worn genre material, from “Out of Sight” to “Ocean’s Eleven.” He and Koepp keep us guessing, but they also get us thinking about something deeper than which of these characters could be the mole (don’t rule out 007 veteran Pierce Brosnan, delivering a brief but effective performance as their agency boss).
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