BEFORE: Pierce Brosnan carries over from "The Out-Laws" and becomes the first actor with three confirmed appearances, so he'll make the year-end countdown, and then Cate Blanchett and Jamie Lee Curtis should be joining him soon. It's WAY too early to think about the end of 2026, but I'm taking some steps to make the year-end processing a bit easier, it took about four or five days of my time in December, thank God I wasn't working a lot. Anyway the goal for this year is to work more at both jobs, or maybe get a new FT, so maybe I can't spend so much time on year-end matters come December.
EDIT: I forgot to mention that I came in contact with Pierce Brosnan last year - well, almost. He was at the theater where I work for a preview screening of a TV show called "MobLand", not any of the movies I watched this week. I was a few feet behind him as he greeted fans and signed some autographs, Tom Hardy did the same thing about half an hour later. I was reminded of this because I'm going through my photos from last year, downloading the good ones from the cloud to my computer, so I can then delete them from my phone. Which I think then also deletes them from the cloud, but it's OK because I already have them saved in two places, on Flickr and my hard drive.
THE PLOT: When an intelligence agent is suspected of betraying the nation, her husband - also a legendary agent - faces the ultimate test of whether to be loyal to his marriage or his country.
AFTER: Most movies about spies would have us believe that they lead lives of action and danger - shoot-outs and car chases, undercover sting operations, wearing disguises and raiding hideouts, stuff like that. But what if the opposite is true? What if the life really entails a bunch of meetings, conference calls and expense reports, turning in your receipts at the end of the week or sifting through mountains of bank records, trying to spot illicit accounts? You know, like a regular boring JOB? Then there are dinner parties, office birthday parties and the tedious business of trying to keep straight which co-workers are sleeping with which, so you don't say anything that's TOO offensive about anyone? I guess it's possible - either that or somebody challenged Steven Soderbergh to make a boring movie about espionage, and he accepted.
The central characters here are married - to each other - and they both work in the intelligence game, or counter-intelligence, whatever that is (it's either spies vs. spies, or it's the process of being dumb, not sure). But how does THAT work, exactly, they've both got busy schedules and they can't work the same operation, obviously, there could be a conflict of interest or they'd be tempted to favor their spouse's well-being over the goals of the operation, and therefore the nation. So the very nature of their profession means they can't talk too much shop at home, so therefore keeping secrets from each other is kind of the default setting. One's always jetting off to some other city on the DL and can't divulge details about it, simply because one is not the superior officer to the other and everything's on a need-to-know basis. If there's anything they can't tell their spouse, they just say it's in the "black bag".
The implication here is that this includes affairs, and the foil characters here (the ones who are NOT married) all seem to have multiple sex partners, on and off the job, and even when there's a committed relationship between two agents it's not exclusive, so everyone's cheating on everyone else and they all just take it in stride, like it's part of the job. Unless someone who's been cheated on decides to stab her boyfriend in the hand with a steak knife during a dinner party. Umm, I don't think she's cool with it. Also, the agents report for regular psych exams, there's like a therapist on staff so they can all work this stuff out, except the therapist herself is sleeping with one of the agents. (It's that red-hot actor from "Bridgerton", so yeah, I get it, but that's probably still some kind of ethical and/or HR violation.)
Unless it's a comedy, there's really nothing that kills the forward motion of a narrative film like a therapy session - and there are a few of them here. Same goes for polygraph tests, those are also known momentum killers or just plain time-fillers. Which again leads me to think that somebody SET OUT to make a boring spy movie, even more boring than "Bridge of Spies", and that's saying something. Sure, this is right up Soderbergh's alley, but essentially this is the "Sex, Lies, and Videotape" of spy movies. Maybe that should be "Sex, Lives and Satellite Surveillance", which is a terrible name for a movie BUT it's accurate.
The plot here (what there is of one) involves a software program code-named Severus. Rather than being a "master code hack" thing as I've seen many times, it's a bit of malware that's designed to get past nuclear security and force a meltdown or something. It was made by the good guys (UK) but once it's out there, that means it can be bought by the bad guys and used against the good guys. Great job, guys.
George Woodhouse in counter-intelligence has been given one week to figure out which of five agents leaked the software, and naturally one of those five is his own wife. George first invites all of them over for dinner and suggests a party game that gives him some insight, but then when his wife takes a sudden trip to Zurich and won't give him the details (they're in the "black bag", right?) he starts to wonder if his wife is the leak, and spies on her meeting with a Russian dissident by using a satellite. It looks like she's selling the malware, but is that really what's going on? Or is she being set up? Quick, set up polygraph tests for everyone! And schedule another dinner party, with another nasty party game!
It turns out you can have an action film that's high-energy or a film full of intrigue that explores personal deceptions and motivations, but you can't really have both, can you? How many car chases did we miss out on so we could have a very long dinner party scene?
Directed by Steven Soderbergh (director of "Side Effects" and "No Sudden Move")
Also starring Michael Fassbender (last seen in "Next Goal Wins"), Gustaf Skarsgard (last seen in "Oppenheimer"), Cate Blanchett (last seen in "Call Me Kate"), Tom Burke (last seen in "Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga"), Marisa Abela (last seen in "Barbie"), Regé-Jean Page (last seen in "Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves"), Naomie Harris (last seen in "Street Kings"), Kae Alexander (last seen in "Maleficent: Mistress of Evil"), Martin Bassindale (last seen in "Here"), Megan Kimber, Paul Bailey (last seen in "Stan & Ollie"), Bruce Mackinnon (last seen in "The Duchess"), Orli Shuka (last seen in "All the Old Knives"), Daniel Dow, Ambika Mod, Alex Magliaro, Summer Knox
RATING: 5 out of 10 easter-egg references to James Bond films
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