Posts Tagged ‘THRILLERS’

Black Bag (2025)

Dir: Stephen Soderbergh | Wri: Cast: Cate Blanchett, Michael Fassbender, Marisa Abela, Tom Burke, Naomie Harris, Regé-Jean Page, Pierce Brosnan, Gustaf Skarsgard | 93′ 2025

An elite team of British intelligence professionals bluff and double-cross one another in this retro-styled spy thriller with a plot far more complex than the theme at its core: that love is stronger than allegiance to king and country.

The lovers in this case are a married colleagues Kathryn St Jean (Blanchett) and George Woodhouse (Fassbender). But not even they can share the highly classified information passing before them at an MI5 style outfit. Iinstead they, and their highly trained team, can use the phrase ‘Black Bag’ as a cover when it suits them, to do something private or not strictly kosher.

Suspecting one of their fellow associates may be a mole, the couple stage a dinner party at their opulent London mansion. The guests could all have a motive for skulduggery when a security lapse occurs, but they all realise their hosts are not just expecting an evening of  convivial conversation: they are Colonel James Stokes (Page); Dr. Zoe Vaughan (Harris), the in-house psycho-analyst and Stokes’ lover; skirt-chaser Freddie Smalls (Burke) who’s been missed for promotion; and his girlfriend, cyber expert Clarissa (Abela).

Rather like TVs Black Doves, but not nearly as violent, this niftily scripted thriller flies along at the speed of light (it’s all over in 93 minutes), so you’d be forgiven for not following the plotline: about a missing device called ‘Severus’ capable of destroying a nuclear facility, and a security leak that sees the couple’s allegiance finally put to the test.

In his third collaboration with Michael Fassbender, Soderbergh acts as his own DoP. Rather like watching those J J Abrams’ films or The Graduate’s pool scenes there’s plenty of lens flare and a needling sense of suspense builds while you blink at the screen and take in the witty repartee. You can tell Blanchett and Fassbender are fully in control and enjoying themselves rather more than the rest of the cast. Great fun while it lasts there’s a feeling this playful spy escapade won’t be remembered for long. @MeredithTaylor

NOW IN UK CINEMAS

Blast of Silence (1961) DVD

Dir: Allen Baron | Cast: Allen Baron, Molly McCarthy, Larry Tucker, Peter Clune | US Noir Thriller 77′

The most valuable asset to an ambitious young filmmaker of the 21st Century would probably be a time machine capable of returning you to the year 1960. Clocking in at just 77 minutes but seeming much longer, Blast of Silence is further evidence that in those days it would have taken genius for an independent filmmaker NOT to create a classic city ‘noir’. Just make sure there’s film in your camera and take your pick from all the breathtaking compositions – complete with vintage cars and sharply dressed passers-by – constantly forming around you; even Michael Winner couldn’t fail to turn in a black & white urban gem three years later with West 11 (1963).

It certainly anticipates Jean-Pierre Melville’s Le Samourai (1967) – but then so do Kubrick’s Killer’s Kiss (1955) and Robert Wise’s Odds Against Tomorrow (1959) – and plenty have been seduced by Blast of Silence’s aura of monochrome period cool into extravagantly overpraising it. Allen Baron’s inexpressive performance as hit-man Frankie Bono (he resembles a young George C. Scott) certainly provides a perfect blank slate on which to inscribe any profundities or angst that grab you. In his capacity as writer-director Baron at some point late in production evidently felt the need to do just that, calling upon two eminent blacklistees whose services at the time would have been available at an affordable price.

The insistent narration reminiscent of Mark Hellinger’s in The Naked City was written under the pseudonym Mel Davenport by Waldo Salt (who later won Academy Awards for Midnight Cowboy and Coming Home), while the rasping voice of Lionel Stander is uncredited but unmistakable on the soundtrack, providing the glue which with Merrill Brody’s photography holds the film together. Unfortunately much of what Stander keeps telling us on the soundtrack doesn’t really need to be spelled out so relentlessly; while Meyer Kupferman’s jazz score is extremely effective in moderation, but gets very noisy in places.

Despite supposedly being such a pro, Frankie Bono’s murder of Big Ralph (played by Larry Tucker, who I recognised from Sam Fuller’s Shock Corridor) is remarkably amateurishly executed, his long-anticipated hit of Troiano no big deal, and he proves remarkably easy to ambush at the film’s conclusion. Richard Chatten

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