Black Bag Review

I saw the spy thriller Black Bag, and here are my thoughts…

A spy finds out one of his five coworkers might be a mole and could cause the death of thousands of people… And one of them is his wife.

So this is one of those movies that the less you know going in, the better a time you’ll have, so I won’t go much into details, but I will say this movie is like a rollercoaster… It has some real fun twists and turns lol.

Black Bag is very stylish, like if David Fincher directed an Alfred Hitchcock-style small-budget 1960s James Bond movie. And while the filmmaking is minimal, it was very effective and exciting seeing things unfurl. Mixed with the entire cast giving great performances, the movie accomplishes a lot while keeping it simple.

Michael Fassbender gives a fantastic reserved performance, which I always find to be the hardest performances to pull off, because you have to do so much while doing very little, so you have to be very precise, but he does it incredibly.

The entire cast is fantastic. Cate Blanchett, Tom Burke, Naomie Harris, Marisa Abela, Regé-Jean Page, and Pierce Brosnan give these layered and complex performances that throughout most of the movie you don’t know who’s on whose side and who could be playing who. As someone who likes to figure out mysteries before the movie does, I had a hard time figuring this one out, so good job to the filmmakers.

I liked the little nods and send-ups the film makes to the James Bond franchise, including hiring former 007 Pierce Brosnan in an “M” (James Bond’s boss) type role. Also, the movie plays around with certain character types known from that franchise and takes them in some interesting and new directions, which I dug.

I like how the film uses the spy genre as a metaphor for relationships and how people define being in a loving, healthy relationship and the good/bad that comes with it.

Given the mystery and complexity of people’s relationships and the nature of spy films in general being so mysterious, it can feel like watching chess sometimes. Like, it can be a bit hard to track everyone’s movements, but once they explain it to you, it makes perfect sense.

This was a nice surprise. I had a great time watching it, and I think it’s one of those movies I can recommend to almost anyone, and they’ll also enjoy it quite a bit.

I give it somewhere between a high four stars and low five stars ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ or ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️.