‘Black Bag’ review: Blanchett and Fassbender play spy games

“Black Bag” contains one of Steven Soderbergh’s most fantastical characters: a monogamous spy. It’s a pretty good thriller about a virtuous British agent named George (Michael Fassbender) who has one week to root out the rat who is attempting to sell one of the U.K. government’s deadly gizmos. He has five suspects, all of whom are in sexy counterintelligence couples. Every operative admits that infidelity runs rampant in their line of work even before George hooks each up to a polygraph machine. But really, this is competence porn: Soderbergh is fixated on Fassbender’s unflappable George, so calm and controlled that we barely feel a twinge of suspense when he’s told the prime suspect is his wife, Kathryn (Cate Blanchett), also a spy. There’s no question of George himself being the double-crosser, because, as every character continually repeats, he doesn’t cheat.

Soderbergh and screenwriter David Koepp offer up the touchstones of the espionage genre: banks of computer monitors, dissident Russian generals and fatal weapons systems with ridiculously on-the-nose names. (This film’s is Cerberus, after the guard dog to Hades.) There’s one indulgent explosion. Other than that, the actual spy games are merely a bit of lingerie tarting up a story about trust. Call it “sex, lies & videotape & guns” — and a sign that Soderbergh doesn’t have faith in today’s audiences to be interested in that kind of thing unless someone might get shot.

Still, spy couples aren’t just hobbyist liars; they’re professionals. Plus, clandestine globe-trotting offers more opportunities for affairs — and more assumptions of forgiveness if one does. Fidelity was of little interest to James Bond, whose women barely survived to a second date. Perhaps that inspired Soderbergh to cast Bond alums Pierce Brosnan and Naomie Harris, the most recent Miss Moneypenny, for this counterpoint that takes loyalty seriously as a life-or-death concern. Soderbergh’s spies are even forced to talk about their relationships in therapy.

The playfulness kicks in when George and Kathryn invite the other suspects over for a dinner spiced with garlic and truth serum. (“What’s on the menu?” Kathryn asks. “Fun and games,” he replies dryly, tipping her off to avoid the chana masala.) The younger couples are slick overachievers James and Zoe (Regé-Jean Page and Harris) and raging disasters Freddie and Clarissa (Tom Burke and Marisa Abela, both hilarious), a drug-addicted scoundrel and his unsophisticated girlfriend who laments that the job makes it impossible to date nice, stable civilians. Their guests are nervous: not only are George and Kathryn professionally intimidating, the entire office considers them the perfect couple.

But are they? George and Kathryn seem steady, but a charmingly romantic Nick and Nora they are not. Even as 007s go, they refuse to be shaken or stirred. Blanchett is so bronzed and impeccably groomed that even in her underwear, she seems to be wearing a suit of armor. George sports a stiff upper and lower lip. (Fassbender’s crisp efficiency has now inspired both Soderbergh and David Fincher to cast him as bloodless score-settlers.)

The couples share a code phrase that means a secret that must be tucked away even from a spouse. “Black bag” is a conversation-stopper, a question-killer, another weapon that risks being indiscriminately used. Yet, George is still entitled to hack into Kathryn’s computer and conduct tiny psychological tests to see if she’ll flinch. Privacy is only superficially respected. “Some things are best swept under the rug,” George advises a separated colleague (Gustaf Skarsgård). Later, he tells Clarissa that the key to his marriage is that “I watch her and she watches me — and I will protect her no matter what.”

“My God, that’s hot,” Clarissa swoons.

It’d be overkill to call this a journey into George and Kathryn’s unusual moral code. It’s more like a flip through a postcard rack. But I enjoyed the film’s ideas as they flitted by. There are sticky questions left for us to answer: What’s the difference between secrets and lies? Is it better to date a callous young twerp or insecure old horndog? Can you bridge the ethical chasm in a man who hates adultery but seems neutral about most other sins? The first marvelously scripted dinner scene starts with its own unresolved debate: Is espionage work patriotic or evil? But that conversation veers after Kathryn casually name-drops “little Eddie.”

From context, we know she means Edward Snowden. Tonally, however, Soderbergh has us thinking of Edward Albee, the playwright of the riveting dinner-party double date, “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” In that great play, part of the pleasure is teasing out when the host couple, George and Martha, are playing a malevolent prank on their guests or tearing each other apart for real. In Soderbergh’s version, his couples make a sport of staying in control. One pair literally draws blood with a steak knife but insists their relationship is fine; another competes over which one of them would get over their breakup faster.

In those moments, “Black Bag” is one of the funniest movies I’ve seen in which no one cracks a smile. Fassbender gave me palpitations just with his neutral delivery of the word “sphincter.” The comedy scenes have an energy that’s missing in the more serious sequences, say the clumsily metaphorical shots of George fishing. Yes, we get it, he knows how to reel them in. Still, it’s a pleasure to enjoy something that’s both straight-faced and freewheeling, like a jazz pedagogue who also knows how to get a crowd dancing. (The groovy score is by David Holmes, whose relationship with Soderbergh dates to 1998’s “Out of Sight.”)

Threats of mass destruction aside, I suspect Soderbergh is no more serious about this film than a fling. His core goal is to flirt with the audience, to remind adults that his movies are committed to entertaining them. And he’s turning himself on as he does it, embracing whatever gets him excited to shoot a scene, from the energetic nightclub tracking shot that opens the film to pizzicato close-ups of Blanchett and Fassbender’s eyeballs that feel like his own Sergio Leone kink. When you’ve got his energy, why keep it in your pants?