If ever there was a movie seemingly written by A.I. “Black Bag” is it.
Generation Jones screenwriter David Koepp (“Spider-Man” – 2002) is the culprit, but there are no clean hands on this cobbled together spy thriller.
Overly complicated and tinged with brief spurts of humor, “Black Bag” is a puzzle that falls apart like a sack of disconnected Lego pieces. This thing rattles and hurts.
Something awful has happened to Michael Fassbender. Not that Fassbender ever had much big-screen charm to begin with, but here he inhabits a negative space usually reserved for folks living in a senior care facility. Fassbender seems to be channeling the late Pier Paolo Pasolini, and it ain’t pretty or even functional.
Fassbender’s obnoxious British spy character George Woodhouse is married to Cate Blanchett’s nearly-as-unattractive UK agent Kathryn St. Jean. I know what you’re thinking, how clever to have married spies pit against each other.
Well, David Koepp was certainly in love with the idea.
Kathryn’s covert activities raise hackles of
suspicion for George, who has a habit of drugging co-worker dinner guests with truth serum in order to extract facts that would otherwise be left to the “Black Bag,” a spy term for secrets-never-to-be-revealed.
Yawning all of the time now.
An utter lack of likable, empathetic, or even knowable characters, doom the movie to be little more than a 93-minute distraction from any other mean-spirited interaction you’re likely to have on a New York City street.
As disappointing as it is to see Cate Blanchett in such a diminished role, it’s some consolation to know that Pierce Brosnan got a payday out of it all.
Steven Soderbergh is no David Fincher, and David Koepp is no Tony Gilroy.
March is rarely a good month for the movies. Here’s your proof.
Rated R. 93 mins.
