Black Bag Parent Guide

“Would you kill for me?” doesn’t count as pillow talk in most marriages but for George Woodhouse (Michael Fassbender) and Kathryn St. Jean (Cate Blanchett), it’s a re-affirmation of their devotion to one another.

George and Kathryn are spies, with storied careers in British intelligence. Now they both have assignments that are “black bag” – they can’t discuss them with each other. George is tasked with figuring out which of five agents has stolen a lethal device: one of them is Kathryn, whose activities are certainly suspicious. Will George be able to figure out what Kathryn is up to without destroying his marriage, risking their lives, or betraying his country?

I had an unexpectedly good time watching Black Bag. It’s a spy thriller for your brain with nary a chase scene to be had. There are zero scenes of people chasing each other across roof tops or down staircases; no cars racing through London’s streets or doing a Tokyo drift. Instead, we get a tense dinner party, poisoning, a drone strike, verbal sparring, lots of traps being set, lies aplenty, and a tense final confrontation. There’s even a battle between realpolitik and morals at the heart of the film, which will give viewers something to debate on the way home.

The film’s tension is ably carried by its cast. Fasbender is a bit too robotic at the beginning but he warms up as the film progresses. Cate Blanchett is enormous fun to watch, and I’m particularly delighted to see a woman over the age of 50 starring in an action film, where she is portrayed as intelligent, skilled, and attractive instead of being past her “best before” date. Pierce Brosnan is also a blast – frankly, I think he was born to play British establishment figures and he’s great in his role as a senior Intelligence officer.

Unfortunately, the movie comes with some downsides. Obviously, there’s some on-screen violence, but compared to most spy thrillers the killing is brief and sanitized. Sex is limited to marital making out and some crude innuendo and there’s a bit of drinking. The real problem here is profanity, with over three dozen sexual expletives, which is what pushes this movie past the PG-13 rating it otherwise deserves and into Restricted territory. It’s too bad: if Black Bag didn’t turn the air blue, I’d be happy to recommend it to genre fans but now I have to give a language warning to potential viewers. Darn it.