Black Bag (2025)

Watched 3/13/25 (theater)

Many directors of mainstream entertainment play American football with their productions. They go big and loud. Hail Mary’s, fake field goals, hook and ladders. It’s either the most exciting win you’ve ever seen or it’s a punishing, bone-breaking loss with the sound level of attending a game and the visual blast of an HD broadcast. Steven Soderbergh plays pool, or billiards, if you will. Slower, more controlled, but requiring extreme precision. The score is mellow, the lighting is moody, and the plot mechanics are as puzzle-perfect as the film’s editing. Low-key spectacles of cool, gentle, calculated movements are his game, outside of Logan Lucky (another excellent movie despite being a more traditional blockbuster attempt).

Characters rarely yell in Soderbergh movies. They rarely sweat. They rarely give too much information. This isn’t to say his movies lack suspense—they live and breathe suspense. But they are committed to the sly, dry effect that so many blockbusters lose sight of in the face of adrenaline. I love some of those adrenaline-fueled blockbusters. John Wick 1-4, early Marvel, the Dune movies, Babylon… These are some of my favorite blockbusters of the last few decades. But Soderbergh rarely indulges in such performance bloat.

Enter Black Bag, Soderbergh porting his patented, character-centric mini-caper verve into an espionage chamber piece. It’s quiet and smarmy, but has the droll zingers and big brains to back up those oft-ill-realized conceits. The genre of spies facing spies is rarely boring, but people talking in rooms for 1.5 hours can be extremely drab if written and directed incorrectly. David Koepp turns in his best script in years, Soderbergh is regulating everything, and it helps that the ensemble is powerfully talented to begin with.

Michael Fassbender, who only plays spies and killers these days, is George, a spy who loves his wife and hates liars, in that order. Cate Blanchett is his equally-loving wife, Kathryn. They both work at an MI6-style British government agency. They have a beautiful office, an even more beautiful home, and somehow tiptoe around each others’ refusals to disclose their “Black Bag” assignments, the most top-secret missions that they face on a weekly basis.

When George catches Kathryn in what appears to be an act of treason, the man and his wife must engage in the ultimate game of deceit. And they like games, but hate deceit. So it gets interesting. They have a gaggle of coworkers who also engage in workplace romance, and it quickly becomes as messy as you’d guess.

Read the call sheet and you’ll be unsurprised to hear that they all nail it. From big to small: Pierce Brosnan is limited but effective as Bureaucracy Bond. Regé Jean-Page, in a welcome departure from his lame performance in the lame movie Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, is spot-on as the pretty-boy high-achiever. Tom Burke totally switches gears from Praetorian Jack to be an awesome shit heel. Naomie Harris is lovely as Moneypenny with a PHD. Marisa Abela is the equally stormy and charming comic relief. The entire Black Bag group sit atop each other’s game boards, slowly but surely revealing which individuals are playing 3-D chess and which are playing checkers.

The style on display is classic Steve. Blurry lens edges with lighting that’s seemingly always idiosynchratic scene to scene. A gorgeous color palette blends everything from a memorable fishing pond to handsome, expensive suits and dresses—no one quite does it like English people in movies do. With George and Kathryn playing their roles cold and detail-oriented, the rest of the gang’s constant folly of word-vomit is the perfect foil to the beautiful blend of location and wardrobe on screen. Tight spaces notably serve their metaphorical purposes with aplomb—another Soderbergh staple, of course.

It may not be the most ambitious movie you’ve seen this year, but it may be the most fun-per-minute. Again, Koepp’s script really hums, and the star power that Soderbergh seems to recruit again and again ensures that each line lands with maximum impact. I wouldn’t dare to give away more about the plot than I already have, but even if you don’t care about espionage thrillers, I highly recommend you seek this out. Hollywood is all about good-looking, charismatic actors pairing with intelligent architects behind the scenes—and that is exactly what Black Bag is. Soderbergh lightly taps the 8-ball to slowly but surely win the game…again.

8.5/10