Black Bag Review | This Blanchett and Fassbender spy thriller holds us on a knife바카라�s edge

바카라�There바카라�s a traitor in the house바카라�, one of the characters in Black Bag pronounces in a small, rarefied circle. You walk into this film expecting a lean thriller but it keeps playfully shifting shape, morphing into a delightfully amoral comment on partnerships, coupledom and loyalty. Arguably Steven Soderbergh's best film in years, it wields style and smarts better and smoother than most entries in this genre.

The central couple, George (Michael Fassbender) and Kathryn (Cate Blanchett), works at the same spy agency in London. You바카라�d presage this to be a source of tussle but they have struck a unique rapport, a marriage that has not just lasted years but thrives and still has the heady pull early into a relationship. Either knows the other will watch, look out for the other, no matter the strict non-disclosure the job exerts. It's an unwritten agreement binding the two in immense mutual trust. Their inveterate loyalty to each other provokes awe as well as intense sexual envy in anyone they cross paths with. Their monogamy is called 바카라�flagrant바카라�, seen as an anomaly each is reminded of. Kathryn is told her devotion to marriage is her professional weakness. In Blanchett's hands, Kathryn has an imperturbable exterior. Nothing can crack her, whereas George does show strains when coiled up in a situation he senses has extreme stakes. Fassbender's gaze is blank, impassive and pitiless, Blanchett's dancing with pertness right before Kathryn makes a neat, spotless incision into a threat. The ever-scorching duo offers and redefines in their individual, magnetic ways the art of utter inscrutability. Blanchett almost seems to float through rooms, slinking around, while Fassbender carries slickly George바카라�s rigor, his precision. Not the smallest of stains would be allowed to crinkle his shirt as he rustles up an elaborate meal.

Black Bag unfolds with an icy, sly hauteur. David Koepp's twisty screenplay understands the elusive, misleading nature of truth amongst a group whose job requires constant cover-up, adopting falsehoods to get to what they want. For the most part, there are little complicated acrobatics of the regular spy film here, opting instead to slice through conversation and extract the mole. There바카라�s a mysterious traitor working at the agency who바카라�s ratted out the existence of a cyber worm called 바카라�Severus바카라� that holds deadly nuclear menace. When George starts suspecting his wife could be the mole, the chain of events is triggered. Though he doesn바카라�t confront her, she too remains opaque, not picking on clues he puts forth to test if she바카라�s hiding something. When both are 'professional liars', what does truth look like? Does it hold any water?

Orchestrating both group psychology and individual dynamics with equal dry wit, Soderbergh puts his ensemble with the likes of Tom Burke, Rege-Jean Page and Marisa Abela to terrific use. Abela is an instant standout in an early dinner scene, combining hurt and rage as her character is hit with betrayal. Dinner hosted by George and Kathryn, with the two subjecting their guests to a punishing series of mind games, is the couple바카라�s extortionist weapon. They set the stage for inflamed nerves and bristled egos, as repressed secrets either tumble out unbidden or yanked into disturbing clear view.

Even as various degrees of deceit and manipulation roll out, the film sticks to swanky, unruffled surfaces. There바카라�s a gasp-inducing fluency at work here, which offsets the film바카라�s modest attempts in knitting global intrigues, a subplot with Russians and nuclear arsenals which never quite coheres or feels as energetic as the network of relationships. Soderbergh, who바카라�s shot and edited it as well like he tends to do, makes it all unravel with zippy ease. Characters double-cross, triple-cross, the narrative imbibing the unreliability of the spies. Anyone, directly or obliquely involved, gets sullied by the rules of the game. There are too many agendas to keep track of, none halting before throwing the other under the bus if that's what it demands. Soderbergh leads you through an array of red herrings strewn in the film바카라�s group of partners; the minute you know where to affix blame, the narrative swiftly turns. To watch the pivoting needle of a hunch as to who the mole is becomes one of the year바카라�s most pulsating theatrical experiences.

Grounding every step of escalating stakes, Fassbender and Blanchett are a stealthy, seductive match conspired by cinema gods themselves. Both their characters dive in to protect each other when covers are about to be blown. Kathryn asks George if he'd kill for her, adding she would, readily and gladly, for him. The two actors bring a sizzling charge, lighting the couple's electrifying quick-mindedness. This couple knows how to command a room, have others in a stranglehold before any subterfuge against them gets too thick.

Never whittling out the denser lingo or undercutting it's razor-sharp intelligence, Black Bag is executed with suaveness, respectful of both its characters and the audience glued to every sudden, jolting shuffle of cards. Soderbergh returns sheer pleasure, teasing glee to the movies, resting on the sensual chemistry between Blanchett and Fassbender to soften the sporadic rough edges in plotting. Black Bag sashays to the couple바카라�s unpredictable dinner-mind game set-up, gloriously peaking in fluidly maneuvered revelations and one of the year바카라�s best scenes. This is an effortlessly chic, unmissable thriller,