BLACK BAG : Tuesday 18th March 2025

I saw the M Rated 'BLACK BAG' this week, and this American spy thriller film is Directed, photographed and Edited by Steven Soderbergh, whose prior feature film making credits take in his debut in 1989 with 'Sex, Lies, and Videotape' which he would follow up with numerous others, including 'Out of Sight' in 1998, 'Erin Brockovich' and 'Traffic' both in 2000, 'Ocean's Eleven', 'Ocean's Twelve' and 'Ocean's Thirteen' in 2001, 2004 and 2007 respectively, 'Contagion' in 2011, 'Magic Mike' in 2012, 'Side Effects' in 2013, 'Logan Lucky' in 2017, 'Unsane' in 2018, and 'Presence' most recently released earlier this year. This film was released in the US last week too, has generated universal critical acclaim, and has so far grossed US$15M from a production budget of about US$55M.

Here British intelligence officer George Woodhouse (Michael Fassbender) is given one week by his superior, Meacham (Gustaf Skarsgard), to investigate the leak of a top-secret software programme code-named Severus. One of five suspects is his wife, Kathryn (Cate Blanchett), also an intelligence officer. He invites the other four suspects, who are also fellow spies, over for dinner on Saturday evening. The four suspects are satellite imagery specialist Clarissa Dubose (Marisa Abela), her boyfriend Freddie Smalls (Tom Burke), agency psychiatrist Dr. Zoe Vaughan (Naomie Harris) and Zoe's boyfriend Col. James Stokes (Rege-Jean Page). At dinner, George drugs their food, but beforehand tells Kathryn not to eat a certain dish, to lower their inhibitions and reveals that Freddie has been cheating on Clarissa, who upon hearing this revelation promptly impales Freddie's hand with a steak knife to the table.  

The next evening while Meacham enjoys a peaceful Scotch on the balcony of his apartment, he suddenly grabs at his chest and keels over, dead from an apparent heart attack. George becomes suspicious of Kathryn after she denies having seen a certain film, although he found a cinema ticket stub in her bathroom garbage bin. The next day he covertly enters her office, logs into her computer diary and learns she will be traveling to Zurich later in the week, on a 'black bag' mission. He persuades Clarissa to redirect a spy satellite for three minutes and twenty seconds and watches Kathryn meet with a Russian operative in real time in a city square in Zurich, Switzerland. 

Meanwhile, James informs George that Kathryn has access to a Zurich bank account containing GB£7M in misdirected and unexplained funds. In a tense psychiatric session, Zoe asks if Kathryn prioritises her career or her husband. In a subsequent session, Zoe breaks up with James. Upon returning from Zurich late at night, Freddie waits for Kathryn outside their house and informs her that George suspects her. Kathryn says that she needs the night to consider her options and next steps. 

We learn that during the three+ minutes George redirected the satellite to watch Kathryn's meeting in Zurich, another Russian operative disappeared from a Liechtenstein safehouse with a copy of the Severus programme, and is now making his way to Eastern Europe to use it to cause a nuclear meltdown. Kathryn uses Clarissa to track the Russian. She suspects that their boss, Arthur Stieglitz (Pierce Brosnan), deliberately allowed Severus to leak in order to cause a nuclear meltdown in order to disrupt the government, even though it could potentially kill thousands of innocent lives.

She leaks the Russian's location to a CIA contact, resulting in a drone strike on a car in Poland, killing both Russians. George puts all suspects except his wife Kathryn through a polygraph test to determine when they first learned about Severus. In bed that night, the husband and wife compare notes and come to the realisation that they are being set up.

George and Kathryn invite the other four suspects to a second dinner party, at which no food or drink is served, but instead Kathryn places a gun on the table, while George says they will play a game. He reveals several secrets - that Freddie and Zoe had an affair, and that Zoe learned of the Severus programme from James but attempted to stop its dissemination due to her Catholic faith. George states that there were two plots - the first by Stieglitz and James to leak Severus and cause a nuclear meltdown, and the second by Zoe and Freddie to use Kathryn to stop it. James grabs the gun, confesses to plotting with Stieglitz and killing Meacham, and attempts to shoot George, but the gun was loaded with blanks. Kathryn pulls out another gun and shoots and kills James with a bullet to the head. The next day George dumps James' body in a pond, where he goes to fish in peace and quiet, while the others return to work. Kathryn informs Stieglitz that his plot failed and suggests he remove himself from the picture, as she has her eyes on his role. Later that night as Kathryn and George reaffirm their love for each other, they realise that the Zurich bank account containing the GB£7M remains untouched and could potentially still be theirs.

With 'Black Bag' Director Steven Soderbergh has crafted an intelligent, mature and engaging spy thriller that pays tribute to the spy classics of yesteryear. This film has both style and substance, and Writer David Koepp will keep you guessing right up until end, and with on point performances from Blanchett and Fasbender, as well as the other principle cast, this all adds up to a very well paced film that doesn't outstay its welcome at a brisk and concise 93 minute run time. 

'Black Bag' merits four claps of the Odeon Online clapperboard from a potential five claps.

-Steve, at Odeon Online-

MANK : Tuesday 24th November 2020.

'MANK' which I saw at my local independent movie theatre this week, is an M Rated American biographical drama film Directed and Co-Produced by the multi-award winning and nominated David Fincher, whose previous film making credits include his debut 'Alien 3', then 'Se7en', 'The Game', 'Fight Club', 'The Curious Case of Benjamin Button', 'The Social Network', and 'Gone Girl' amongst others. This film is based on a script written by David Fincher's father Jack Fincher which he wrote in the '90's with David wanting to film it following 'The Game' in 1997 but it never eventuated because David wanted to shoot the film in black & white to maintain an authenticity of the period in which the film is set ie. the Hollywood of the 1930's and '40's. At that time no studio wanted to shoot a film in black and white and when father Jack died in 2003 the film was put on the back burner, until mid-2019 when Netflix International Pictures put the movie into production. The film has garnered positive critical acclaim, and went on a limited cinematic release from last week before streaming on Netflix from 4th December. 

The film opens up in 1940 with a car motoring along a dusty highway and turning off at Victorville and driving up to the North Verde Ranch where Herman K. Mankiewicz (Gary Oldman) alights from the vehicle on crutches, assisted by his good friend and writing collaborator John Houseman (Sam Troughton) and English typist Rita Alexander (Lily Collins) and a German nurse Fraulein Frieda (Monika Grossman). Mankiewicz (or 'Mank' as he shall be known) has a broken leg in three places from a recent motor vehicle accident. Laying down in an adapted bed he receives a phone call from Orson Welles (Tom Burke) about a screenplay he has been commissioned to write in ninety days, only Welles tells him that he now has sixty days. Mank is not happy about the news but relents and accepts the direction from the Producer, Director and star of the upcoming film, which the studio, RKO Pictures, have given him complete creative control over - not bad for a 24 year old untried and largely unproven movie maker.

And so Mank gets to work on the script at the alcohol free ranch much to his chagrin, although he is able to get dosed up on bottles of barbiturates provided by Houseman instead of whisky, which has the effect of knocking him out cold for twelve hours at a time. Ultimately, Mank is able to smuggle in to the ranch a crate loaded full of his favoured whisky, unknown to Houseman. With Mank dictating the words to his script for Rita to write down long hand and then type up at night, the process is sporadic at best and with the sixty day deadline looming he has still only one hundred pages completed in what Houseman describes as beautifully written, but incoherent and too high brow for American audiences to grapple with for their 25cents cinema ticket price. Mank however, persists along his chosen path.

In the meantime, we see constant references and flashbacks to various key dates in the previous decade, and his meetings, run ins, business and personal relationships with the likes of screen Actress Marion Davies (Amanda Seyfried) and mistress to William Randolph Hearst (Charles Dance) the famed American businessman, newspaper publisher and politician, whose life story was to be the main inspiration for Mank's screenplay of Charles Foster Kane - the lead character that would be portrayed by Orson Welles in the 1941 film 'Citizen Kane'. 

In addition we see his dealings with Louis B. Mayer (Arliss Howard) of Metro Goldwyn Mayer fame; prolific Hollywood film Producer Irving Thalberg (Ferdinand Kingsley); American film Producer, Screenwriter and Executive David O. Selznick (Toby Leonard Moore); Mank's brother and Director, Producer and Screenwriter Joseph L. Mankiewicz (Tom Pelphrey) and of course Mank's long suffering but fiercely loyal wife Sara (Tuppence Middleton). 

And naturally there are sub-plots along the way that centre around Mank's heavy drinking and alcoholism (which would eventually kill him in 1952 at the age of just 55), his propensity to gamble on almost anything, the successful attempt by Irving Thalberg who was an MGM Studio Executive at the time to swing the 1934 California Governor's election against the socialist candidate Upton Sinclair (Bill Nye), and his declining relationship with Hearst, which culminates with a drunken rant by Mank at Hearst Castle at San Simeon aimed at Hearst and Mayer and in front of other Hollywood movers and shakers who all one by one get up and leave the dinner table out of disgust or embarrassment or both. And of course the ever looming deadline counting down on sixty days by which time Mank has his final draft of three hundred pages, but doubts that it is really any good until Houseman and brother Joseph tell him that it is probably his finest work. 

In the final analysis Mank's script for the film that would become 'Citizen Kane' was nominated for an Academy Award in every possible category, but won the award only for Best Original Screenplay for co-authors Mank and Orson Welles. Neither Welles nor Mankiewicz attended the dinner, which was broadcast on radio. Welles was in South America filming 'It's All True', and Mank refused to attend. George Schaefer, who was President of RKO Pictures in 1941 when the film was made, accepted Mank's Oscar in his absence. It should be noted that Mank and Welles clashed over the writing credit for 'Citizen Kane', with Welles reportedly offering Mank a bonus of US$10K if he would let Welles take full credit. Mank went to the Screen Writers Guild for a determination, and they eventually laid down a joint credit with Mank's name appearing first. Welles maintained that he had always intended to share the writing credit. 

'Mank' is a beautifully shot film looking as though it was filmed in the late 1930's in crisp black and white by Cinematographer Erik Messerschmidt; the dialogue is sharp, emotive and mature; the production values top notch; and the cast are all uniformly good but special mention must go to Gary Oldman who once again inhibits his character in every sense and every scene - just as he did with his Academy Award winning turn as Winston Churchill in 2017's 'Darkest Hour'. And Fincher here has crafted a film that serves as a stirring footnote to Hollywood's 'Golden Age' of domineering studios, those who ran them, and the rot that lurked largely hidden beneath. The film is entertaining, thought provoking, stylishly made, has a haunting soundtrack by regular musical collaborators Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, and Fincher has here once again proven that he is right up among the best that Hollywood has to offer and is at the top of his game. Oscar bait for sure and worthy of repeat viewing that will be right up the street of every cinephile, but if you're not one of those, then there is a chance this film will be lost on you.

'Mank' merits four claps of the Odeon Online clapperboard from a possible five claps. 

-Steve at Odeon Online-