Spy flicks don’t come much sleeker, sexier or smarter than this one.
Director Steven Soderbergh and writer David Koepp have concocted a tightly plotted, British-based thriller that unfolds over the course of a single week. The execution is mesmerizing, the well-sculpted characters persuasively played by a top-flight cast.
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| George (Michael Fassbender, left) and Freddie (Tom Burke, center) seethe quietly while their boss, Arthur (Pierce Brosnan) demands a quick result on the search for a mole known to have stolen a dangerous software cyber-worm. |
Soderbergh controls every aspect of this glossy slice of spyjinks, wearing additional hats as editor and cinematographer (the latter two under his not-at-all-secret aliases of, respectively, Mary Ann Bernard and Peter Andrews). As always, Soderberg loves long tracking shots, and this film opens with an impressive one.
Veteran intelligence officer George Woodhouse (Michael Fassbender), an elite operative at Britain’s closely guarded National Cyber Security Unit (NCSC), is summoned to an off-site meeting by his boss, Philip Meacham (Gustaf Skarsgård). A dangerous top-secret software cyber-worm, code-named Severus, has been leaked: likely to Russian agents. Five of George’s colleagues are suspected, and one happens to be his wife, Kathryn (Cate Blanchett), a powerful and trusted NCSC agent.
She’s also George’s weakness: He’s unwaveringly devoted to her (and everybody at NCSC knows this).
He requests two weeks to conduct a thorough investigation.
“Thousands of people will die, if Severus gets into the wrong hands,” Meacham explains.
“Oh,” George replies. “One week, then.”
Koepp’s dialogue remains this crisp throughout, often with an undercurrent of dark humor.
Soderbergh then cuts to George at home, meticulously preparing an ambitious meal for a dinner party. His care and precision, with every little menu detail, mirror his similarly clinical and methodical mind: always thinking four or five moves ahead, like a master chess player. But he’s also fastidious: a few tiny splatters of gravy, on a shirt cuff, demands an immediate change of clothes.
He catches Kathryn in their bedroom, getting dressed for the gathering. As a couple, they’re elegant, erudite and obviously whip-smart. Their banter is flirty, but also wary; we wonder what they conceal from each other, out of professional necessity, and also — possibly — for personal reasons.
George explains the nature of the party, which will gather all the suspects, each a colleague. (Shades of Agatha Christie!)
They include George’s longtime friend, Freddie Smalls (Tom Burke), whose messy personal life has made him a security risk, and stalled his progress at NCSC; upper-echelon agent Col. James Stokes (Regé-Jean Page); staff psychiatrist Dr. Zoe Vaughan (Naomie Harris), tasked with keeping all operatives alive, safe and focused on their missions; and satellite imagery specialist Clarissa Dubose (Marisa Abela), considerably younger than the others.
The evening begins amicably and playfully: six colleagues having a good time, and enjoying each other’s company.
George proposes a game, coldly designed to be psychologically intrusive and revealing. Then he watches, as intimate secrets are exposed ... and suddenly the evening isn’t fun any more.
Abela is the most vibrant here; the youthful, impressionable Clarissa cannot believe what she’s witnessing. She accepts their work’s importance, but suddenly realizes that the characteristics that make her five colleagues good agents, also make them terrible human beings, likely incapable of honesty and genuine intimacy.
And this is merely the first evening.
Over the next several days, telling encounters take place during mandatory sessions with Zoe; and bedroom talk between George and Kathryn.
“I’d never lie to you,” she tells him, but then adds, “unless I had to.”
Both also admit they’d kill for each other.
Sadly, Kathryn soon winds up in the crosshairs. A carelessly discarded movie ticket stub, an unexplained trip to Zurich, a mysterious $7 million ... for what, precisely?
The situation worsens when NCSC head Arthur Steiglitz (Pierce Brosnan) puts additional pressure on George, James and Freddie. Steiglitz wants a quick result.
So George ponders, while taking his small outboard motorboat into the middle of a large lake, and pretending to fish. Nobody ponders better than Fassbender; his cool, hooded gaze and flinty silences speak volumes. Smiles are rare, and — if anybody is watching — probably not genuine.
Blanchett exudes stealthy, feline grace; Kathryn is impeccably polished, every word and movement carefully calculated. But she’s capable of temper, particularly when reluctantly submitting to Zoe’s mandatory analysis sessions. At such times, Blanchett’s waspish fury is coldly threatening.
Burke has a lot of fun with poor Freddie’s many failings: too much alcohol, too many younger girlfriends. He’s cheerfully unapologetic, the self-professed life of any party ... but this doesn’t conceal the fact that deception has become his default response. He lies even when it’s unnecessary.
Page’s James is stoic, disciplined and hard to read. He’s also intense; James’ comments often seem to spring from a well of anger. James has long respected George as a mentor and role model, but he’s also a competitor and an obstacle.
The layers of duplicity, scheming, cross, double-cross and triple-cross almost become overwhelming; every conversation — and there are many — feels laden with innuendo and multiple meanings. Koepp’s screenplay must’ve run to hundreds and hundreds of pages.
Overly talky films run the risk of becoming boring and/or obtuse. But Soderbergh and Koepp have firm control over everything, and the situation’s complexity becomes more delectable and ingeniously twisty, with each fresh revelation (or are they?).
The verbal — and occasionally physical — jousting is heightened by a suspenseful jazz score from David Holmes, a longtime Soderbergh collaborator whose music has graced most of the director’s films since “Out of Sight” and the “Ocean” series.
This is totally fun: the most engaging 93 minutes I’ve spent in quite awhile.
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