Black Bag (2025) | REVIEW

Directed by Steven Soderbergh — Screenplay by David Koepp.

When it comes to filmmaking, you would be hard-pressed to find someone who is a more prolific filmmaker than Steven Soderbergh. Since the 2020s began, he has had six feature films released — some in theaters, some on streaming services. Incredibly, it’s not like his films suffer from the speed with which he gets them out for the public to see. In the case of No Sudden Move (2021) and Kimi (2022), those were some of the best surprises of their respective years. Soderbergh is also quite experimental, as he has tried his hand at using iPhones to shoot major motion pictures, like Unsane and High Flying Bird. His latest film, Black Bag, never feels like an experiment, rather it feels like Steven Soderbergh at his very best. It’s a sleek relationship spy drama with a terrific ensemble cast led by Michael Fassbender in top form.

Black Bag, from director Steven Soderbergh and writer David Koepp (Panic Room; Spider-Man; Kimi), follows George Woodhouse (played by Michael Fassbender), a super meticulous British intelligence officer, who is informed that he has one week to investigate and identify a so-called ‘leak’ within the intelligence program concerning a top-secret software program known as Severus. He’s given a list of five individuals — all co-workers of his– one of whom must be the ‘leak.’ On the list are 1) satellite specialist Clarissa (played by Marisa Abela), 2) her boyfriend Freddie (played by Tom Burke), 3) psychiatrist Zoe (played by Naomie Harris), 4) her boyfriend James (played by Regé-Jean Page), and 5) George’s wife Kathryn (played by Cate Blanchett). To initiate his investigation of them, George invites all of them over for dinner at his and Kathryn’s place, where he challenges them to a game, which he hopes will begin to reveal to him who is working against his agency.

If your idea of a great time is watching exceptionally good actors converse about relationships and top secret information with dialogue that is so precise and specific to each character that every word lands with personality and intentionality, then Black Bag is your kind of film. It’s equal parts Mr. and Mrs. Smith, Agatha Christie whodunit, and John le Carré espionage drama, and it is such a tight and well-balanced production that it, at 94 minutes, is without an ounce of fat to be trimmed. Some may desire more action or outward intensity out of their spy films, but this film is more so concerned with the dynamic of a romantic relationship between people in espionage (the title essentially refers to the ‘safeword’ that they use whenever they’re asked about something that they can’t divulge due to the secrecy of their career) and the hyper-scrutinization that top-notch agents use in their analysis of people they meet, regardless of the context. 

It is a stylish, efficient, occasionally sexy, but always intelligent film. It opens with an extended tracking shot with the camera fixed to focus on Fassbender’s back as he walks into a night club to retrieve a co-worker and then go back out (in a way that kind of made me think of Goodfellas, though with a very different mood and purpose). The film also often takes on these voyeuristic, surveillance-like camera angles to emphasize a specific aspect of the espionage genre. Speaking of which, it’s also great fun to watch Fassbender ponder which person is the leak, while he’s fishing — it’s on-the-nose in a way that’s super delightful. The film, though always thrilling, is at its best during two extended dinner table sequences in which the key players all get their moments to express themselves. These scenes are both extremely fun to watch due to the playful aspect of the multi-couple dinner date and, at the same time, rather tense and tightly orchestrated due to the analytical purpose of them, from the perspective of our spook protagonist. All of the main players are also extremely well-dressed, and their characterization allows for the supporting cast to show such delicious aspects to their characters. I would happily watch these actors watch paint dry and chat about it, if Koepp and Soderbergh were in charge. 

Fassbender is perfectly cast as the stiff, meticulous human lie detector, as he is so good at playing an intelligent version of the ‘the gears are turning’ whenever he’s across from someone, all of which are aspects that I suppose he perfected when he starred in Ridley Scott’s Alien franchise. A similar perfectly calibrated ice queen persona is the one taken on by Cate Blanchett, who, however, is tasked with a much more playful and mysterious character. They’re both excellent, but the film’s secret weapon is that the supporting cast can, to some extent, match their entertainment value. This is especially true for Tom Burke and Marisa Abela, who get to play much looser characters. Abela steals scenes and her flirty scenes with Fassbender are some of the most memorable scenes in the entire film.

Steven Soderbergh’s Black Bag is the kind of mid-budget movie for grown-ups firing on all cylinders that we don’t get a lot of these days and which we should support. This is exactly why it was so discouraging that I saw it in an empty theater room on its opening weekend. It is a stylish, deliberately paced, but efficient cerebral spy drama with a mystery that manages to always be at least one step ahead of you. It features richly drawn characters, entertaining espionage dialogue (that trusts its audience), and actors working at the top of their game. It is damn near flawless, as all I have to say against it is that it is perhaps not exactly the most original film in the world (as it is a film in a well-trod genre) and that I have some questions about the way the lighting is often overexposed, for reasons that didn’t occur to me on my first viewing. But I absolutely loved this, and I would be shocked if it doesn’t find its way into my top ten films list for 2025 in twelve months. 

9 out of 10

– Review written by Jeffrey Rex Bertelsen.