Olivier Assayas’ ‘Wasp Network’ is an unwieldy, misshapen spy film that wants to wear you down
A review of the new thriller, on Netflix now.
At a certain point in Olivier Assayas’ new spy thriller Wasp Network — somewhere around the 90 minute mark, after what felt like the fourth or fifth reversal of allegiances and umpteenth shifting of loyalty— I realized I had no earthly idea what was going on. Characters are inscrutable, their motivations deliberately and consistently hidden from each other and from the audience. Big decisions are made off-screen and referred to obliquely in past tense later on. Tense action sequences end with a fade-out in the middle of the action, and we learn characters’ fate through other people talking about them a few scenes afterward. It feels at times like a movie made up of nothing but that disorienting moment in No Country for Old Men where you see that the ostensible lead, Josh Brolin, has been killed in a shootout we weren’t shown… only similar moves are repeated over and over, stubbornly refusing to let you latch on to any one character or follow any one storyline to a satisfying conclusion.
It’s, to put it bluntly, exhausting. And yet… the more I think about it… the more I respect it.
Let me rewind — something the movie also does frequently. Wasp Network is a true…
