What I liked most about Black Bag is the whole thing turned out to be a whodunnit.
Part of what I love about this narrative style is the inherent asymmetry between what the characters know and what the audience knows. The average viewing experience (unless you’re a genius) is that the protagonist knows more than you do for nearly the whole story until that final moment. Throughout the film, you start to get a clearer picture of what’s going on, right up until that final thrilling moment when all the proverbial cards are laid on the table.
Black Bag has a tight cast of characters that feel real enough while also fitting together in a really satisfying way–a way that maximizes interesting conflict throughout the story. Movie stuff, I guess. The layered relationships between these 6 dinner guests offer great material for generating this kind of a narrative. And what a fantastic way to get us invested in them. The first couple of scenes do an excellent job at introducing us to each one of them and in particular, how they relate to one another. It helped get me engaged in a story that otherwise started very quickly and kind of in media res.
If I had to raise a criticism or two, it would be that there are a few times that felt like the film was putting style first a bit too much. The polygraph scene is an example of this: it was basically non-functional from a narrative perspective. I didn’t really learn anything about the characters, their actions, relationships, or intentions. It was sort of just transitional material to get them all into the climax at the Woodhouse residence. This kind of made the ending feel a bit sudden and anticlimactic, although that’s just a matter of taste, I guess. It certainly looked cool.
The style, overall, is certainly a large part of the draw with this kind of film, and this one delivered. I was a particular fan of the lighting. Throughout the variety of locations, each shot was lit quite strikingly, particularly in the interior night scenes at the pub and the Woodhouse home at the beginning and at the end. There was certainly a version of this movie that was very stale-looking, and I’m glad that’s not what we got. This security administration has an office with oodles of natural light (in the middle of downtown), which made it fun to look at, although I’m not sure how secure that would be…