Fassbender and Blanchett shine in spy thriller Black Bag

In the spirit of Mr and Mrs Smith, Michael Fassbender and Cate Blanchett are husband and wife secret agents in this well-directed film.

Michael Fassbender as George Woodhouse and Cate Blanchett as Kathryn St. Jean in Steven Soderbergh's Black Bag. Picture: Claudette Barius/Focus Features

Black Bag (M)
93 minutes
In cinemas
★★★½

“Not everybody aspires to your flagrant monogamy.” So a spymaster tells senior spy George Woodhouse (Michael Fassbender) in the opening sequence of Steven Soderbergh’s entertaining espionage comedy-thriller Black Bag.

George is married to fellow senior spy Kathryn St Jean (Cate Blanchett). They live in London, have no children and work for British intelligence.

“You’re the perfect f..king couple and everyone knows it,’’ says junior spy Clarissa Dubose (Marisa Abela).

However there’s a nagging problem in this stable of not-so-slow horses. There’s a traitor in the ranks and George is told to find out who it is. His boss is Arthur Steiglitz (one-time 007 Pierce Brosnan).

Everyone is a suspect but the five main ones are Dubose, arrogant young spy James Stokes (Rege-Jean Page), dissolute older spy Freddie Smalls (an excellent Tom Burke), the in-house psychiatrist Zoe Vaughan (Naomie Harris, also excellent) and, most importantly, George’s wife.

There’s a Swiss bank account, a secret weapon and the menacing shadow of Russia. “We’ll be rid of the prick once and for all,’’ Steiglitz tells his troops. He doesn’t name names but I think we know who he’s talking about.

George has to consider how much he will do for the one he loves. So, too, does Kathryn. She’s a secret agent, after all, so she knows the game.

This dilemma is reminiscent of the one faced by Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt in the 2005 movie Mr and Mrs Smith, during which the two stars started a relationship that led to marriage in 2014. As far as I know, Blanchett and Fassbender have not taken method acting this far.

Soderbergh has fun with the spy v spy idea. A comic highlight comes when George makes the suspects undergo a polygraph. How do you extract the truth out of someone who knows the right time to clench their sphincter muscle? And the titular black bag is what spies say when asked a question they’d rather not answer. Sorry. That’s in the black bag. Classified.

Fassbender, with the perfect face for showing zero emotion, and Blanchett are strong. Blanchett cooly delivers the line of the film — “Don’t ever f..ck with my marriage again” — in a context I’ll leave viewers to discover.

The script (David Koepp, who has Indiana Jones and Mission Impossible to his credit) is wryly funny and the music (David Holmes, who worked with the director on the Ocean’s movies) adds its own comic touch.

This movie is Smooth Soderbergh. It’s brisk, engaging, humorous, well-directed, written and acted. You can put your brain in low gear and sit back and be entertained.