In a world built on deception, populated by people who can lie as easily as breathe, strait-laced British intelligence agent George Woodhouse (Michael Fassbender) values the truth above all else. Which is probably why he’s given the task of unmasking a traitor suspected of stealing and selling a piece of potentially devastating technology. What complicates matters is the fact that one of the main suspects is his wife, high-ranking fellow agent Kathryn (Cate Blanchett). Others in the frame include in-house psychiatrist Dr Zoe Vaughan (Naomie Harris), alcoholic maverick Freddie Smalls (Tom Burke) and junior agent Clarissa Dubose (Marisa Abela).
This knotty spy thriller from Steven Soderbergh attempts to distract us from a convoluted plot and baffling character motivations with fabulously chic interiors, impeccable tailoring and a general sense of dissolute luxury. And for a while it almost works: it’s always a pleasure to watch Blanchett slink expensively around a set, and Fassbender wears his serious, Harry Palmer-style thick-framed glasses with suitable gravity. But times have changed, and to audiences acclimatised to the grubby, malodorous whiff of frustration and professional disappointment that seeps out of something like the TV adaptation of Mick Herron’s Slow Horses, this all feels about as authentic as a set of dental veneers.
The main problem, however, is the writing. We could probably get past the implausibly handsome cast and glossy, monied look of the production design if David Koepp’s screenplay delivered a satisfying payoff. David Holmes’s score borrows from the jazzy, percussive urgency of his work for Soderbergh’s Oceans films, but, like much of Black Bag, it feels slick but superficial.
In UK and Irish cinemas
