My Cultural Diet

At first glance, George and Kathryn look like a stylish and devoted couple living a perfect life in their upscale flat. But given that both of them work in British intelligence — he’s an interrogation expert, she’s an operative — their marriage is fraught with things they simply can’t talk about or share with each other. Which would seem like a threat to a healthy marriage, but George and Kathryn make it work. That is, until some top-secret software gets leaked to the Russians and Kathryn becomes one of the prime suspects. Black Bag looks like the sort of slick, stylish thriller for mature audiences that Steven Soderbergh can direct in his sleep. But the film’s chilly tone, implausible scenarios (including a dinnertime party turned interrogation that gets increasingly preposterous as it unfolds), and icily aloof performances constantly kept me at arm’s length. Scenes obviously intended to be taut and suspenseful never once caused the needle to move on my blood pressure, and had I watched the film any later in the evening, they might have even put me to sleep. That said, I did enjoy Michael Fassbender’s performance as George, a tightly wound and always-suspicious man who’s deeply in love with a woman who could very well be a traitor.

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