The mission of George in Black Bag is simple – find the traitor who is secretly leaking information to the rival stakeholders, and prevent a catastrophe from taking place. And his prime suspects include a satellite imagery specialist Clarissa (Marisa Abela), and her boyfriend Freddie (Tom Burke), the agency psychiatrist Zoe (Naomie Harris) and her boyfriend James (Rege-Jean Page), and the most important of them all, George’s wife Kathryn. And given the inter-personal relationships at play, the entire first act unfolds like an episode from Perfect Strangers (2016). The setting is moderately tense with a playful undertone that is laced with dry humour, which often erupts during the ‘dinner’ conversations that transpire between the folks. The revelations over an unassuming game too aren’t result oriented for George, but more on the lines of infidelity that you would associate to be the oddly sprayed ingredient in an espionage thriller. But that is what sets this thriller aside without firing any shots (initially), and still providing room for humour to set in.

One of the interesting aspects of the characterization are that almost all suspects are coated with the same paint. This basically means that there is a rhythmic routine to every character in the same setting, that doesn’t quite allow you room to place your bets on anyone. The room for dropping hints isn’t a luxury either, even as you witness George slowly taking the initiative with his wife. George in many ways, remains a calm and collected character who is often devoid of emotions. In fact, it wouldn’t be wrong to compare him with the protagonist from The Killer (also played by Michael Fassbender). There is a silent purpose that he fulfills of tracking down the traitor, without having extravagant expressions to boast of. In a scene, you see him casually inquiring with Kathryn about a film that she ‘may’ have watched (with a purpose), only for him to casually ‘play along’ when she agrees to watch it with him with a pretext of not having watched it earlier. In another scene, you see him calmly inviting favours of shifting the satellite view with the help of Clarissa, in order to have a surveillance on his wife who is supposedly meeting a Russian agent. Hence clearly, one of the themes of the drama also revolves around the rocky marriage between George and Kathryn, who double up as colleagues, and have a unique conflict before them – their love for their country before themselves!

There is a searing geo-political theme doing the rounds while consistently acting as a connecting thread in the drama. This is also reflective as a pseudo timeline of 7 days that George needs to stick to, before catastrophe would strike. There is a talk about a Severus program holding a secret, which if held by wrong hands, would supposedly cause a nuclear meltdown thereby destabilizing the government. This, while the stakes in the drama are raised with the sudden death of a character followed by a security breach on behalf of George who chose to have surveillance on his wife. The underlying themes of nationality versus morality are expertly explored through a couple of characters who in a scene, undergo a polygraph test.

The events leading up to the final act are almost mirror opposites of that of the first act when all characters are seated across the table. The only shift in the tone is in terms of the writing shifting gears, and adding a little more urgency to the proceedings while deceptively relying on the usage of dry humour. And even when the final reveal takes place just minutes before the end credits roll out, it does open a pandora’s box on the inter-personal relationships that had a direct impact on the lives of George and Kathryn, with multiple set-ups in play. The set-ups here were both exploitative and counter-exploitative in nature, that literally pitted the husband-wife duo against each other. This also was in sync with the two recurring themes of the film – the love for the nation (with respect to one setup), and the love between two characters (with respect to the other setup), both of which were addressed along the way. And in that regard, the final reveal was a winner too, something that kept you guessing until the very end. Hence, the screenplay here is niche with dollops of dry humour that compliments the leisurely pace of the drama yet keeping you invested with the characters and their shifting dynamics.