I watched this in the Picturehouse on the 17th of March, 2025.
It’s a couples spy thriller, with Cate Blanchett and Michael Fassbender, and it’s spectacular. It’s about a couple who are both MI6 agents, who are (spoiler alert) set up by playing each off their affections for the other. The guy is led to believe his wife is lying to him; he repurposes a spy satellite to observe her, as a result of which a recently-leaked software virus is leaked into the wrong hands. She finds out he’s in trouble, and orders a drone strike to clean up the mess. With them both implicated in serious treason, they realise they’ve been played, and plan how they can turn the tables.
It’s deftly scripted, and acted wonderfully. There are moments of fantastic dark comedy, particularly the dinner scenes bookending the movie which involve personal revelations, hand stabbing, and twisty revelatory dialogue of the highest order. It’s also (I think) impeccably researched? They definitely got the military satellite names and orbits dead on, the acronyms were correct, and the set design (even the specific type of Dell mice, although I don’t think the British Intelligence apparatus has the budget for all the flashy glass and high-tech security shown).
At points the dialogue was a bit stilted, as though the director had told the actors to try and imitate Wes Anderson’s rhythmic filmmaking, and it jarred a little.
Otherwise, amazing. A mix of Mr and Mrs Smith (both the movie and the series), the last few Bonds, and a dialogue-heavy format which I love (cf. 12 Angry Men and The Box episode of B99), but with its own distinctive take. I particularly love that the adoration between husband and wife is taken sincerely - they both would do anything for each other, which is both their weakness and strength (of course), but in a non-cliched way. It would have been so easy to expose the marriage as a sham, but they didn’t.