Black Bag

My nephew and I went to a Thursday preview of Black Bag last night.  We were both really looking forward to it and we were not disappointed.  When George Woodhouse (Michael Fassbender), an intelligence agent who specializes in administering polygraphs, is given a list of five agents who might be responsible for allowing a cyber worm capable of destabilizing a nuclear facility, code name Severus, to fall into the wrong hands, he is dismayed to see that his wife, fellow agent Kathryn St. Jean (Cate Blanchett), is one of them.  He has a week to find the traitor so he invites the other agents, Freddie Smalls (Tom Burke) and Clarissa Dubose (Marisa Abela), who are a couple, and James Stokes (Rege-Jean Page) and Zoe Vaughan (Naomie Harris), who are also a couple, to an elaborate dinner at his home with Kathryn whereupon he provokes them into revealing intimate details about themselves (in a fabulous tension-filled scene).  He eventually zeroes in on Kathryn and initiates surveillance on her black bag activities (anything too sensitive to be revealed even to a spouse) but is his motivation to expose her or to protect her?  This is a slick and stylish spy thriller but it focuses more on the loyalties and betrayals that happen within three relationships more than those that happen between countries and, in my opinion, that makes it even more compelling.  It also focuses more on dialogue than on action (although there is a great sequence involving a drone), especially in a brilliantly edited scene involving polygraph tests because the answers to the questions posed reveal everything (if you are paying attention).  It is so much fun watching Fassbender and Blanchett spar with each other while delivering the witty dialogue and the rest of the cast is also excellent (Burke is so good at playing a cad).  I love intelligent thrillers and this is a good one.  Go see it!