2025, Steven Soderbergh Contagion) -- download
Wait, was that it? What? No, did she didn't she constant cat & mouse game between the two main characters? No cute quippy scene as they shoot at each other with silenced pistols? Just a quick conclusion to the story punctuated by a metric ton of tight dialogue? OK, wow.In the movie the use of the term "black bag" is a reference to work-related stuff they cannot talk about, even with each other. In the British spy business, you might be married, but that doesn't mean you can just blab on about everything at work. "Why are you going to Zurich?" - black bag, "What did you and Steiglitz talk about?" - black bag. Its the opposite of Rebecca and Ted's (Ted Lasso) ultimate honesty term "Oklahoma".
And yet, despite this requirement, power couple George (Michael Fassbender, Assassin's Creed) and Kathryn (Cate Blanchett, Borderlands) are utterly dedicated to each other. Buuuut, as the movie opens, we are not so sure, as George has been tasked with finding out who betrayed the agency, who disappeared with the thumbdrive of secrets called Severus. Maybe its his wife? And if it is, what will George value more, his marriage or his loyalty to the agency?
George begins his investigation with a dinner, inviting his closest work friends. Two couples, two agents and their partners, also agency staff. Its a tense "party" as they play one of George's games, one his wife knows is more about interrogation than party fun, and the attendees catch on pretty quickly, but also fall into his trap, revealing hereto unknown secrets about each other, and ending with George's close friend Freddie (Tom Burke, The Musketeers) getting his hand pinned to the table with a steak knife by the girlfriend he is cheating on. George does not like liars.
Do we learn anything? Who knows, I surely didn't know. I am sure George learned some things. That same evening, the connection that alerted George to an internal leak dies of a heart attack. And soon after, George finds a movie ticket in his wife's waste basket, to a movie she claims to have not seen. Yes, George suspects his wife, we can see that, and he proceeds down this path of inquiry, at first by breaking into her office, followed by conning Freddie's GF, yes the one who put a hole in George's dining room table, into using her surveillance satellite access to spy on his wife. We are learning... something.
And from there, my memory serves me a chess game happening. Pawns are moved around, as are the more valuable pieces. A lot is going on, but subtly. And surprisingly, before I knew it, the game was over. This was never going to be a movie with high action scenes, with Bond-ian chase scenes or Atomic Blonde hallway fights. Its all resolved in offices and rooms in the Soderbergh style; OMG does he love his particular architecture and set decorating. Those rooms themselves are almost distinct characters, from George and Kathryn's flat, to the bars they visit to the style of offices used for the agents. There is nothing better than a seasoned director who knows exactly what his internal vision should look like. I cannot wait to watch his take on a "haunted house" with Presence -- and yet, wait I do continue to do.
I also very much like how when we think we are being directed down a path of George investigating Kathryn, we learn he is just filling in blanks. He knows very well he is being played, being misdirected into believing she is the villain, and he just plays along to see where it is supposed to lead him. Once he reaches a point, he reveals what is going on, to her, and together they end the plot, via a fatal second dinner party. We should have seen their dedication via Kathryn's required psychology session with Dr. Vaughn, another of the original dinner party attendees -- she is unflappable. And George's dedication to Kathryn is not to be tested or trifled with.
Kent's view; we agree.
Of note, I should return to and grab the entire season of "The Agency", the Fassbender led CIA thriller drama, that came on the heels of his assassin movie "The Killer". No, not that "The Killer".
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