Steven Soderbergh’s Black Bag is a classy, gripping psycho-political spy drama.  The best synopsis I can give is to say it’s an updated version of John Le Carre’s Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy:  there’s a mole in the ranks of the British Secret Service, and the George Smiley character has to find him or her.  

Here, that character is even called George – coincidence?  I think not. 

I say ‘him or her’ because this story is set very much in the present and the sexual politics have been updated along with the technology and the geopolitics.  Women are players in the main game – espionage officers in their own right, not just wives or lovers.

It’s an ensemble piece, but the two central characters are George Woodhouse (Michael Fassbender) and his wife Kathryn (Cate Blanchett).  As in Le Carre’s story, she is sexy and desirable, but in a departure from Tinker Tailor, she’s just as devoted to her husband (unlike Smiley’s Anne) as he is to her (although Fassbender’s George is sexier than Alec Guinness’s one!)  In fact their marriage is something of a legend within the Service, and it’s this well-known mutual devotion that’s one of the key underpinnings of the plot.   

It’s darker and knottier than Le Carre’s Ur-story of treachery at the top of the British intelligence establishment.  George and Kathryn aren’t the only sexual partners in the story, as we see in the opening scene where George – known for his cooking skills – has invited his colleagues, some of whom are loosely coupled, to a dinner party in his and Kathryn’s elegant London pad, where he sets in train the inquisition which leads to the eventual denouement, which also takes place there.  

The Cold War is over, but Putin’s Russia poses a threat to world peace and stability.  Are the ones who want to bring Putin down the goodies?  Or are they the baddies if they are prepared to sell off top-secret western technology to achieve their aim? 

In common with Le Carre’s stories, Black Bag deals not only with the moral ambiguities of geopolitics, but with the corrosive effects of the secret life on normal human relationships.  The top spies have access to virtually unlimited surveillance over not just the enemy, whoever that might be, but over colleagues, wives, lovers, even parents.  Suspicion thrives.  Trust is undermined.  Intimacy is poisoned.  

The racial politics have been updated too.  The diverse cast includes brown men and women such as Naomie Harris in the role of Dr Zoe Vaughan, the agency psychiatrist whose job is to assess an agent’s fitness for duty, and whose say-so can get them thrown off the job.  They have to talk to her; she knows all their secrets.  Her skin colour has not been a career impediment but it hasn’t exempted her from suspicion about her personal and political allegiances. 

Fassbender plays the George Smiley character with the requisite inscrutability and owlishness.  He even wears dark-rimmed spectacles. 

Cate Blanchett plays Kathryn Woodhouse with her usual fine-boned hauteur and supercilious elegance: a blonde ice-queen who only melts for one man.  

Pierce Brosnan plays M.  James Bond finally makes it to the top job!

I’ve always been a huge Le Carre fangirl and I love spy stories.  I give Steven Soderbergh’s homage to the master five out of five.