Black Bag

Black Bag

This is the best film of the year so far - a super cool and stylish spy thriller for grown ups by Steven Soderbergh and screenwriter David Koepp. There’s a leak in the agency and intelligence expert, George Woodhouse (Michael Fassbender), has been tasked with finding the mole, with his wife, Kathryn (Cate Blanchett), also implicated as one of the key suspects. Thus, follows some ‘fun and games’ as Woodhouse sets about trapping the traitor at a delicious dinner party, which is the main set piece of the film, but what a party! If only all dinner parties could be so sexy and so much ‘fun’.

Soderbergh announced his ‘retirement’ back in 2013 but I’m glad he keeps on churning out films because his recent ‘Presence’ and ‘Black Bag’ is Soderbergh on top form, both with David Koepp as the screenwriter, and this is fast becoming a formidable creative partnership. The plotting is super tight, the dialogue is to die for and the set design, particularly the Woodhouse’s home, is salivating. You’ll be Googling filming locations when the credits roll to find out where that house is in London, but some lucky (rich) bugger lives in it.

The supporting cast of Tom Smalls and

Regé-Jean Page who play agents, Naomie Harris as the agency psychologist, and Marisa Abela who is a spy satellite operator, are all superb in a masterclass of acting and the delivery of lines for a grown up audience. Pierce Brosnan has a cameo as the agency chief (Arthur Steiglitz) and lends the role an appropriate gravitas and grizzled charm.

But, it is Fassbender and Blanchett’s film who play the married super agents. Fassbender channels his best George Smiley impersonation, but with a modern sensibility, after coming off the well lauded spy series, ‘The Agency’, which itself was a remake of the superb French original. Blanchett is secretive and seductive and will keep you guessing whether she is the spy or not, but as a team, well, you should see the film and find out. At its heart, Black Bag is a chamber piece, and a super smart spy thriller resembling an Ingmar Bergman meets John le Carré production. Go see - the best film of the year (so far)!