‘Black Bag' Review: Blanchett v. Fassbender
'Black Bag' is the third movie written by David Koepp and directed by Steven Soderbergh that's been released since 2022, and it's a banger. It's also sleek, witty and lean to the bone, a fizzy, engaging puzzler about beautiful spies doing the sort of extraordinary things that the rest of us only read about in novels and — if we're lucky — watch onscreen. It's nonsense, but the kind of glorious grown-up nonsense that critics like to say they (as in Hollywood) no longer make. That's true to a great extent despite exceptions like Koepp and Soderbergh, even if they're too playfully unorthodox to be prototypically Hollywood.
The filmmakers' latest duet stars Cate Blanchett and Michael Fassbender as Kathryn and George. Cozily and happily married, the couple lives in austere luxury in a townhouse in London, where they keep long, eventful hours working for a British intelligence agency, the (real) Government Communications Headquarters. As spies go, the two certainly look and speak their roles, or at least the fictional versions of them: They're cunning, suave and as enigmatic as the title suggests. Unlike their famed counterpart James Bond (he's at MI6), though, they put in serious face time at the office. Inside a glass tower, they watch and are watched in turn, tracking enemies and sometimes eliminating them.
The setup involves an explosively dangerous threat in the form of malware called Severus, presumably named after the despotic Roman emperor. There appears to be a mole in the agency, and George is among a select few trying to identify the culprit. He has a list of five possible candidates, all of whom work in the agency's power ranks. Among the suspects is — ta-da! — Kathryn. Because this isn't a problem that George can take to a marriage counselor — even if one of the main characters is an agency shrink — he does what he's trained to do: He spies on her. It gets tricky. It also gets funny and predictably violent, with some of the sharpest, nastiest scenes unfolding across a family dining-room table.
Koepp and Soderbergh are virtuosos of genre, and 'Black Bag' is right in their wheelhouse. Each has made a range of films (Koepp also directs), and they last collaborated on the ghost story 'Presence,' which came out earlier this year. If the two excel at thrillers, it's partly because, I imagine, high-stakes intrigues give filmmakers room to push norms to extremes and even ditch them. Koepp and Soderbergh's 'KIMI' (2022) is another tight genre piece that embraces and detonates conventions. Its myriad influences include films about trapped women as well as claustrophobic paranoid thrillers from the 1970s like 'The Conversation' and 'Three Days of the Condor,' reference points that also inform 'Black Bag.'
To judge from George's chic glasses and turtlenecks, the filmmakers revisited some older Michael Caine movies, too. Fassbender doesn't have Caine's charms, and he's less persuasive as a romantic foil. 'Black Bag' has its share of intentionally outlandish moments, some giddily funny (there are more ticklish moments than thrills), but among the less convincing plot points is George and Kathryn's oft-stated devotion to each other. Onscreen, Fassbender and especially Blanchett have an otherworldly quality that makes them reliably interesting to watch, but it's one that can feel like a membrane separating them from more ordinary souls. They both draw you to them, but, unlike, say, Brad Pitt, they don't necessarily invite you in.
Whether these nagging doubts about George and Kathryn's relationship are intentional, they work in a movie that teases you with secrets and weapons, border-crossing and misdirection, and is filled out with a note-perfect supporting cast that includes Regé-Jean Page, Naomie Harris, Tom Burke and Marisa Abela. Even as the story heats up and starts to get crowded, George remains the intrigue's central question mark. He prowls into the movie like Henry Hill strolling into the nightclub in the famously long take in 'Goodfellas,' a scene that slyly suggests that George isn't to be trusted. He may be hot for Kathryn, but there's something 'bloodless and inhuman' about him, too, as Le Carré wrote of his famous spy, George Smiley.
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2 hours ago
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Babyshambles guitarist Patrick Walden dies aged 46
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Elle
4 hours ago
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The Books You Should Actually Be Reading This Summer, According to ELLE Editors
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New York Post
4 hours ago
- New York Post
I've ditched HR to free my company from the social-justice police
'I want to be the first company without HR.' It was just a throwaway comment I made this month at a conference called Freedom Fest — but the audience went wild, and the line went viral in an Instagram post with over 5 million views. 'They produce nothing,' I continued. 'They monitor our words. They tell us what we can and cannot say. Advertisement 'They inhibit creativity. It's bad for business.' At my own start-up — XX-XY Athletics, the only brand standing up for the protection of women's sports — I'll be damned if I'm going to let the ladies of 'The View' run around policing my employees' conversations. We started with no Human Resources department a year ago, and we'll continue with no HR as we grow. Advertisement My statement touched a nerve because anyone who has worked in corporate America has been subjected to the censorious 'Head Girl' rule-making emanating from HR departments. And they are tired of it. When I started my business career in the early 1990s, HR was responsible for recruiting, benefits and payroll — that was it. As I moved up the ladder and found myself in executive meetings, the HR leader weighed in last on key business decisions, if at all. Advertisement Thirty years on, HR leaders are calling themselves 'Chief Human Resources Officers,' and they proclaim their power with reckless and off-topic abandon. HR departments today are packed with Tracy Flicks, the way-too-eager high schooler played by Reese Witherspoon in the movie 'Election.' Flick is the archetypal 'Head Girl,' a term derived from the British school system and its tight hierarchy of internal discipline — ambitious and officious with little actual skill or intellect. Hand-raisers like these are not selected to lead for intelligence or ability, but for conscientiousness and a willingness to uphold 'the rules.' Advertisement That was fine when HR had no power. But now, after yearning for a seat at the table, HR's midwit elites have found a way to exert increasing influence in the corporate environment — leveraging social-justice buzzwords to accrue power and (what else?) make more rules. In the 2020s, HR asserts its newly found clout with tyrannical zeal. When I interviewed in 2023 for a CEO job at an $8 billion retailer, I made it all the way to the end of the corporate leadership receiving line, successfully fielding queries on my business acumen and brand-building accomplishments. My last interview was with the HR representative on the board. Her first question: 'Will you apologize for what you've done?' Get opinions and commentary from our columnists Subscribe to our daily Post Opinion newsletter! Thanks for signing up! Enter your email address Please provide a valid email address. By clicking above you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Never miss a story. Check out more newsletters What I'd 'done' was advocate for opening public schools during the COVID pandemic. By 2023 I'd been proven right. That didn't matter to the HR lady. I'd violated her tightly enforced script. Advertisement I didn't apologize, and I didn't get the job. Over the last two decades, HR has gone from operational support to Operation Head Girl Hall Monitor. They force-feed trainings about acceptable language; they make 'merit' out to be racist; and they set hiring criteria based on risk avoidance rather than excellence. But hiring people who don't offend anyone won't result in employees who take initiative and make things. Advertisement Am I being sexist in calling them Head Girls? In 2023, 76% of HR managers in the United States were female. The shoe fits. (And yes, men can be Head Girl types, too.) British academic Bruce Charlton explains the Head Girl 'can never be a creative genius because she does what other people want by the standard they most value.' That's why the Head Girls of HR made everyone add pronouns to their email signatures starting around 2020: Social standards. Not because it drove the business. Advertisement No, these time-suckers shift focus away from the business. Front-of-house employees — builders, makers and service providers — must spend a significant amount of time thinking about the words they use rather than their actual jobs. Critics of my viral comment pushed back at me: 'You need HR to avoid unnecessary risk!' they chorused. Right. That's the fear HR leverages to maintain its unearned influence. Advertisement Risk avoidance means hiring mediocre people with no opinions who never offend anyone. Those hires won't take my one-year-old start-up to big-brand status. I want big thinkers with creative minds. Sometimes these folks are disruptive. But there are no new products or breakthrough marketing campaigns without them. My company is a walking, talking HR violation. We 'misgender' all day long. In fact, speaking truth (as I call it) is required to work here. We're not in school anymore. We don't need a persnickety Miss Manners etiquette-enforcer telling us to be nice. I'll continue to go it alone without HR. I'll assume the so-called risk so I can lead in my own voice. And I'll succeed, or fail, on my own terms. Jennifer Sey is founder and CEO of XX-XY Athletics.
