Delightful bag of vintage spy thrills

Espionage thriller Black Bag is arguably director Steven Soderbergh's sexiest and most knotty caper since Out of Sight, released way back in 1998. Like that film, Black Bag tracks the week-long exploits of two incredibly attractive people — MI6 agent George Woodhouse (Michael Fassbender) and his wife, fellow MI6 intelligence officer Kathryn St Jean (Cate Blanchett). The couple gets caught up in a complex conspiracy at work — one that makes as many demands of their marriage as it does of their professional lives.

Black Bag is an increasingly rare beast — a brainy adult thriller with current plot points. It demands your attention despite its brevity.

The film's title is a reference to a government agency greenlighting a covert illegal operation in the pursuit of suspected criminals. The story starts with George getting a discreet directive from his boss, Philip Meacham (Gustaf Skarsgård). Meacham thinks that there's been a security breach and that one of five people at MI6 has stolen a top-secret software program, Severus, and he wants to find out who it is. The suspects are a pair of agency handlers, Freddie Smalls (Tom Burke, Furiosa) and Colonel James Stokes (Regé-Jean Page), Freddie's girlfriend and satellite analyst Clarissa Dubose (Marisa Abela), agency psychiatrist Dr Zoe Vaughan (Naomie Harris) and, shockingly, Kathryn. George begins his investigation with a dinner party designed to allow him to get a read on his suspects, and fans out from there, asking favors and flouting protocols along the way. As George digs deeper and deeper into the geopolitical mystery, the film moves briskly toward a Poirot-style showdown among the suspects.