"Black Bag" Review

 If you watch the trailer for Black Bag below, it implies that it is a taut spy thriller about married spooks Mr. & Mrs. Smith George (Michael Fassbender, Prometheus) and Kathryn (Cate Blanchett, Tar) from the director of Traffic, Steven Soderbergh, and the writer of Jurassic Park, David Koepp. There's a traitor and it may be George's wife. Dun-dun-DUHN!! Sadly, it's a sluggish, talky, drawn-out slog where you the struggle to stay awake for the sparse moments of interests within.

Opening with British SIS (formerly MI-6) agent George meeting a contact at a London club. He's given a list of five names, including his wife's, and the warning that if something called Severus is used, thousands of people could die. He has a week to find out who the bad guy is.

To this end he invites the other names on the list, all co-workers, to his and Kathryn's swanky townhouse for dinner and I'm just going to copypasta the synopsis from Wikipedia here to save time:

[S]atellite imagery specialist Clarissa (Marisa Abela, Industry), her boyfriend and managing agent Freddie (Tom Burke, Furiosa), agency psychiatrist Zoe (Naomie Harris, Skyfall), and her boyfriend and managing agent James (Regé-Jean Page, Bridgerton). At dinner, George drugs their food to lower their inhibitions. In an effort to learn more about the guests, George engages them in a psychological game. Amongst other things, it is revealed that Freddie has been cheating on Clarissa; in response to which Clarissa angrily stabs Freddie in the hand with a steak knife.

But a lot of convenient clues are pointing at Kathryn from ticket stubs in the trash to a movie she claims to have not seen to a cover identity she'd used tied to millions of dollars deposited in a Swiss bank account. While attempting to see why she was in Zurich, George has Clarissa redirect a spy satellite off the books for a few minutes at which point a suspected Russian agent in possession of Severus is able to escape.

Enraged, their boss Stieglitz (Pierce Brosnan, Mrs. Doubtfire) orders George, Freddie and James to find the traitor. George is sweating because he's been acting in a way which looks like he's letting his marriage interfere with national, if not global, security. Of course, there's a lot of red herrings and twists and turns are reveals because spy movie. 

But it's handled so quietly that it's easy to doze off like the missus did. In discussing why everyone seems to fraternize at work, one talks about how operational secrecy precludes discussing one's work with civilians, but it's hard to trust your romantic partners because even with everyone being a spy, you still can't talk about what your specific missions are and the catch-all term "black bag" (roll credits!) can be used to protect state secrets or your nooners at hotel with someone else from the office you're shagging.

As for George and Kathryn, they seem to be the perfect couple, but he clearly states that he can't stand liars, but something is clearly up with her. Can she be trusted or is she using his love and trust to do dastardly deeds?

The performances are fine and when Koepp actually writes something interesting Soderbergh stages the scenes well enough (he also does his own cinematography and editing under pseudonyms), but even at 94 minutes it feels padded and slow. He and Koepp have done several movies together lately, all in the 90-minute range in defiance of the length-over-depth ethos weighing Hollyweird down with 3-1/2 hour marathons like The Brutalist and Killers of the Flower Moon, but their Max original Kimi was much better (score: 7.5/10, no written review) even with a much less pedigreed cast.

Black Bag narrowly avoids falling into the 4/10 Skip It range by virtue of Fassbender's performance and the occasional sparks of interest, but this isn't the heartiest recommendation.

Score: 5/10. Catch it on cable.