Spy thrillers and marriage dramas make for great bedfellows. Consider Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2005) or Allied (2016), or all six seasons of The Americans. When your entire line of work hinges on duplicity, can you really leave your job at the door and trust the person you share a life with?
Steven Soderbergh’s sleek Black Bag, which just hit Peacock, is as much about the carefully calibrated dynamics of marriage as it is the intricacies of spycraft, as even a date night carries the same high-stakes thrill as an assassination plot. In a profession that demands paramount secrecy, the lead couple’s surveillance of each other, borne less of suspicion than of the primal urge to protect, has never looked sexier.
