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BLACK BAG

Producers: Casey Silver and Gregory Jacobs   Director: Steven Soderbergh   Screenplay: David Koepp   Cast: Cate Blanchett, Michael Fassbender, Marisa Abela, Tom Burke, Naomie Harris, Regé-Jean Page, Pierce Brosnan, Gustaf Skarsgård, Kae Alexander, Orli Shuka and Daniel Dow   Distributor: Focus Features

Grade: B+

The latest collaboration between Steven Soderbergh (who not only directs but serves as his own cinematographer under the pseudonym Peter Andrews and as editor under the name Mary Ann Bernard) and writer David Koepp is a clever but basically inconsequential tale of skullduggery in the  British intelligence service.  It’s Le Carré Lite, but elegantly constructed and acted, as enjoyable as the popular “Knives Out” puzzlers.

The plot begins with imperturbable George Woodhouse (Michael Fassbender) being assigned by his superior Meacham (Gustaf Skarsgård) the task of uncovering the identity of a mole in the agency who’s stolen the operational plan of the story’s MacGuffin, Severus.  The device can be employed, we’ve eventually told, to set off a disastrous reaction in a nuclear plant. 

George is given the names of five suspects.  The first four are Freddie Smalls (Tom Burke), a boozer and womanizer irked over being passed over for promotion; Col. James Stokes (Regé-Jean Page), a ramrod-stiff military type; Clarissa Dubose (Marisa Abela), a saucy data analyst; and Dr. Zoe Vaughan (Naomie Harris), the agency’s resident therapist.  The fifth, Meacham explains apologetically, is Woodhouse’s own wife, coolly glamorous Kathryn St. Jean (Cate Blanchett).

George’s methods are simplified by the fact that the four outsiders are romantically involved, Freddie with Clarissa and Zoe with James.  So he invites them all over for dinner with him and Kathryn, loosening their tongues with some food additives to provide him with clues to follow.  He then spices things up with a nasty parlor game to encourage inadvertent revelations.

Beyond saying that his scheme works, it would be churlish to go into too much detail about what follows.  Suffice it to note that as events unfold there will be, in no particular order, a murder; a clandestine meeting with the emissary (Orli Shuka) of an ambitious Russian expatriate (Daniel Dow); a secret Swiss bank account with a substantial balance; a drone attack; secret surveillance of an agent via satellite; and the disposal of a body in a lake.  Not to mention a marathon run of polygraph tests, presented by director-editor Soderbergh in a cheekily insouciant montage.  And lurking behind everything is the agency’s supremely supercilious head Arthur Steiglitz (Pierce Brosnan), who, in one simultaneously hilarious and upsetting scene, shows a predilection for lunching on Ikizukuri.

In everything that happens is an undercurrent of infidelity, whether it be in terms of treason to one’s country or faithlessness in personal relationships.  It’s revealed early on that Meacham, who instigates George’s search for the mole, is at odds with his wife Anna (Kae Alexander).  And when Freddie’s dalliances with other women confirm Clarissa’s suspicions, her reaction is one of the film’s major shocks.

But the chief marital question, of course, revolves around George and Kathryn.  Protocol requires them to keep professional secrets from one another—“black bag” is the shorthand all the agents use to refer to some part of the job they can’t divulge to anyone—and each of the spouses keeps things from one another over the course of the week George has been allotted for his investigation.  Is their frequently-expressed devotion a ruse?  Is Kathryn the traitor her husband will have to expose? 

All will be resolved by the close of this delicious if not terribly nutritious confection, stylishly appointed by production designer Philip Messina and costumer Ellen Mirojnick and given added verve by David Holmes’s jazz-inflected score.  The performances are spot-on, with Blanchett’s icily seductive, coyly suggestive Kathryn a perfect counterpoint to Fassbender’s George, penetratingly intense under his sly show of reserve.  (A story early on about his treatment of his own father is a jewel.)  All of the others encapsulate their characters’ personalities—Burke Freddie’s petulant defensiveness, Abela Clarissa’s impudent assertiveness, Page James’s rigorous self-confidence, and Harris Vaughan’s prim professional demeanor.  Brosnan, meanwhile, is enormously amusing as a James Bond type gone to seed.

Ultimately “Black Bag” is an exercise in gamesmanship, on the part of both the characters and the filmmakers and actors who have fashioned them with such finesse.  If in the end the game doesn’t prove to amount to much—there’s none of the dark introspection about spycraft that one finds in Le Carré—it’s certainly pleasurable to watch the twists and turns as they play out.      

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NOVOCAINE

Producers: Drew Simon, Tory Tunnell, Joby Harold, Sam Speiser, Matt Schwartz and Julian Rosenberg   Directors: Dan Berk and Robert Olsen  Screenplay: Lars Jacobson   Cast: Jack Quaid, Amber Midthunder, Ray Nicholson, Betty Gabriel, Matt Walsh, Lou Beatty Jr., Evan Hengst, Conrad Kemp, Jacob Batalon, Garth Collins, Tristan de Beer and Craig Jackson   Distributor: Paramount Pictures

Grade: C-

It’s hard to believe that anybody thought it was a good idea to base a gory action comedy on a premise trivializing a life-threatening medical condition, but screenwriter Lars Jacobson (whose sole previous feature credit was 2017’s “Day of the Dead: Bloodline”) did, and some studio executives apparently agreed.  Directors Dan Berk and Robert Olsen (“Villains,” “Significant Other”) jumped on board, and the result is “Novocaine,” which, like the drug, will evoke different responses: it will make lovers of comic movie violence blissful while inducing those averse to it to gag.

Jack Quaid, probably best known for his role in Prime Video’s “The Boys” and the recent horror comedy “Companion,” is Nathan Caine, a straight-laced, timid fellow who’s the assistant manager at a San Diego credit union but a nice one—with the imminent arrival of Christmas, he postpones calling in the loan of recent widower Earl (Lou Beatty Jr.) so that the old fellow can keep his store open through the holiday.  Nathan is also infatuated with recently-hired clerk Sherry (Amber Midthunder), but too shy to say so.

He also suffers from CIP, congenital insensitivity to pain or congenital analgesia, which compels him to live a very cautious life: the slightest injury could be fatal, since he wouldn’t feel it.  As he tells Sherry when she invites him out for coffee after spilling a scalding cup of it on his hand, he doesn’t even eat solid food for fear of biting off his tongue.  Nonetheless he succumbs to her prodding, tastes her cherry pie (!), and loves it.  Later at a bar she defends him against an arrogant high school classmate of his (Tristan de Beer), one of the bullies who nicknamed him Novocaine because of his condition. 

At the office the next day, three robbers dressed in Santa suits arrive brandishing automatic weapons and demand the safe be opened.  Their leader, a snarling guy named Simon (Ray Nicholson), kills the manager (Craig Jackson), forces Nathan to open the safe and, once the cops arrive, takes Sherry hostage.  Simon and another of the trio, Andre (Conrad Kemp), take off with her in tow after shooting down the cops.  The third, whom we later learn is Andre’s bother Ben (Evan Hengst), escapes separately.  Nathan, fearing the backup won’t arrive in time to pursue them, grabs a police car and does so himself.  He eventually winds up facing off against Ben, and after that tracks down Simon, Andre and, of course, Sherry.  Meanwhile SDPD officers Mincy (Betty Gabriel) and Coltraine (Matt Walsh) are on his trail, suspecting he was part of the gang. 

Nathan’s trek takes him from one brutal encounter to another, including one with Zeno (Garth Collins), a fearsome tattoo artist, and another with Ben in his elaborately booby-trapped house.  He’s forced to call on his only friend Roscoe (Jacob Batalon), the online pal he plays video games with, for help, but whatever injuries he suffers in the process of being beaten, stabbed and otherwise brutalized, a shot of epinephrine keeps him going like a human version of the Energizer Bunny.  And when he finds Simon and Sherry, he has a surprise in store.

But the movie doesn’t stop there.  It careens on for another excruciating act, with yet another villain who has as many lives as the proverbial cat.  When Alan Arkin came back in “Wait Until Dark,” it was genuinely frightening.  When Stevenson, trying desperately to channel his father’s gift for maniacal depravity, does so repeatedly, it’s just boring.

As for the others, Midthunder has an appealing sauciness, while Batalon, as a guy much less heroic in real life than he is online, gets predictable chuckles doing his shtick.  So does Walsh.  As for Quaid, he strikes one as a more likely second banana than a leading man, looking rather like an elongated Stan Laurel; but he’s certainly game about going through all the indignities the script demands.  The movie looks pretty threadbare, as befitting the San Diego setting, with a pedestrian production design (Kara Lindstrom) and cinematography (Jacques Jouffret); equally nondescript is the generic score by Lorne Balfe and Andrew Kawcynski. The fight choreography is reasonably good and the editing (Christian Wagner) tries to be energetic but sometimes sputters; more impressive are the gore effects, though whether showing fingernails being convincingly ripped off is an accomplishment to savor is questionable.

So is the very idea is depicting CIP in the way “Novocaine” does, as a comic means of becoming a quasi-superman.  The premise is actually pretty tasteless, and though fans of such cartoonish violence might be willing to overlook that to get their fill of live-action Looney Tunes mayhem, others with more sensitive stomachs will feel differently.