Despite being a spy movie, one of the film's that came to mind was Knives Out (2019), which was obviously inspired by Agatha Christie's stories of Hercules Poirot, a detective who often gets trapped in situations where he has to root out a murderer who is also contained amongst a group of suspects in his immediate circle. Recently, I saw a British short film directed by James Cleave and written by Tom Ward-Thomas called Mafia (2024), which was about a British family sitting around a dining table playing the titular game, also known as Werewolves. The Emmy-winning series, The Traitors (2023), is an adaptation of that same game. This film, directed by Steven Soderbergh and written by David Koepp, felt a lot like that series to a certain degree and a lot like Cleave's short film. However, the stakes in Cleave's short was sibling rivalry. Here, the stakes are international espionage and potential nuclear meltdown. Yet, Soderbergh and Koepp never really make us feel those stakes. They keep most of this narrative down on the level of Cleave's family drama.
Michael Fassbender (Steve Jobs and 12 Years a Slave) stars as George Woodhouse, a British intelligence officer that works for S.I.S., which handles foreign operations. He's known as being very cold and heartless, almost robotic or non-human. He doesn't express emotions, not on the job and not in a lot of his interactions. He's very professional. It allows him to be very good at his job. He's unmoved and unbiased. He even spied on his own father and exposed his dad's lies without any hesitation. Therefore, it should be no problem for him to handle his next assignment, which is to spy on his own wife.
Cate Blanchett (Blue Jasmine and The Aviator) co-stars as Kathryn St. Jean, a fellow British intelligence officer in the S.I.S. and it's at that London office where presumably she met George. This isn't a situation like Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2005) where the two are hiding their identities from each other. They know who each other is and what each does. However, she is suspected of being a traitor. She's suspected of stealing government secrets and trying to sell those secrets to Russia or some other enemy state or global actor. She's sexy and can be quite mysterious. She can also be very slick and sly in how she talks and operates. She's not that far off from Blanchett's characters in Carol (2015) or Nightmare Alley (2021).
However, Kathryn isn't the only suspect. There are four other suspects, and all four are people who work at S.I.S., so in order to deduce who the actual traitor is, George decides to invite all of them over to his house for a dinner party. While they're all having dinner, he will play games in order to manipulate them and reveal who the guilty person is. This is where this film separates from Knives Out because Daniel Craig in that Oscar-nominated feature was more of an interesting and engaging character. Fassbender's George is a cypher, intentionally so, but the coldness in his character and in a lot of the characters makes the whole thing a bit distancing, so it's a bit difficult to connect to the characters.
Naomie Harris (No Time to Die and Moonlight) co-stars as Zoe Vaughan, a psychiatrist or therapist who works at S.I.S., as someone who counsels intelligence officers. When it comes to coldness, she has a scene that underlines her icy nature, which she should have for her job. Her coldness is also a realistic aspect, but it's undercut when she does things that are unrealistic and unprofessional. Namely, she socializes with her patients and even becomes intimate with them. Given that her government job deals with people who hold top-secret, government information, she shouldn't be so casual with them. Yet, even if you excuse that, she absolutely shouldn't be having sex with them. Of course, I'm all for a flawed or complicated character, but, aside from some superficial explanations, the film doesn't explain or explore those flaws or complications. We have no reasoning as to why she would sleep with not one but multiple patients, which is a major rule-breaking.
Regé-Jean Page (The Gray Man and Bridgerton) also co-stars as James Stokes, a fellow officer at S.I.S., but we don't learn much more about him. He's called a colonel, which suggests he served in the British Army, but we don't get much more about if he served in war or what his experiences were. It's not even clear what his role is specifically at S.I.S. He seems to be an analyst of some sort. It's obvious that George is known for land-based surveillance and even is a polygraph machine operator. Yet, it's not clear what James does, or what he specializes in, if anything at all. All we get is that he's mocked for playing too much video games and not being a good romantic partner, especially not for Zoe who has James as one of her patients and conquests.
It makes this film again more separated from Knives Out. Yes, the opening scene does a lot of heavy-lifting in terms of introducing us to the characters, but the film doesn't go much further to let us know who these people are. One could argue that Knives Out is guilty of the same. Yet, I feel like that film had way more suspects and does a better job of delving into almost each one. Here, I never really felt that strongly that I could say much about any of the so-called suspects.
Marissa Abela (Industry and Back to Black) plays Clarissa Dubose, a fellow S.I.S. officer who is probably the exception. We see that she specializes in satellite surveillance. We see her in action operating satellites. We also get a great scene with her where she explains the difficulty in dating anyone both outside their work and inside of it because it involves lying either way. It also shows how much she's willing to put up with. Her scene where she undergoes a polygraph test is probably the most fun of the whole thing.
Rated R for language, sexual references and some violence.
Running Time: 1 hr. and 33 mins.
In theaters.