Movies

Black Bag, starring Michael Fassbender and Cate Blanchett and directed by Steven Soderbergh
Trailer: Focus Features

Black Bag
Directed by Steven Soderbergh
Rated R
Interrogated 14 March 2025
#BlackBag

Black Bag is Steven Soderbergh’s fresh, stylish new spin on the lives of spies.

Dark Windows

Black Bag stands in stark contrast to this week’s other major release, Novocaine. At a spritely 93 minutes, Black Bag is 17 minutes shorter than Novocaine. It’s also far less violent and far more rewarding.

Black Bag is the latest from director Steven Soderbergh, the mastermind behind quite a deep, diverse catalog of movies that includes Traffic, Ocean’s Eleven, Erin Brokovich and Magic Mike. Soderbergh apparently forgot he was supposed to be "retired" as he’s never been busier than during the past couple years.

Be thankful. Black Bag is a movie treat featuring a great cast and a tight script from David Koepp, who recently collaborated with Soderbergh on Presence. Koepp also has a deep, diverse catalog to his screenwriting credit, including Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Spider-Man, Jurassic Park and Mission: Impossible.

Actually, the genesis of the Black Bag storyline dates back to Koepp’s work on the first Mission: Impossible movie, released almost 30 years ago. But, unlike Mission: Impossible, Black Bag isn’t a ticking time bomb kind of movie, despite the fact tens of thousands of lives hang in the balance and the lead character, George Woodhouse (Michael Fassbender, A Dangerous Method), has negotiated one week to dismantle the threat.

Dinner for Six

Black Bag opens with a dinner party. It’s a unique dinner party hosted by George and his wife, Kathryn St. Jean (Cate Blanchett, Tar). They work in the British Secret Service, along with their guests.

This dinner party is something of a cinematic rarity these days. There’s a lot of dialogue and the conversations include references to the problem at hand. It’s important to pay attention and follow that dialogue closely, an unusual demand to be made of modern audiences that are still busy checking text messages and social posts while the movies begin.

This scene plays like something out of an Agatha Christie mystery. The point of the dinner party is for George to spot the liar as they play a game in which one guest makes a resolution for the guest sitting to their right.

Character foibles are revealed, as are some dark secrets and tales of infidelity.

George hates liars and he’s a master at sussing them out. That includes his very own father, whom he surveilled. George’s efforts ultimately destroyed both his father’s career and his marriage.

Sex, Lies and Flash Drives

Soderbergh is once again stylish and he gets playful with the presentation. In that sense, along with Christie, at times Black Bag feels a little bit like a throwback to Alfred Hitchcock. In one scene, George goes out to a lake for a little fishing and some pondering. The clicking and spinning of his fishing rod wheel is in sync with his mental state. As he fishes, he’s also reviewing his dinner guests and their performances through his mind’s eye. Reeling in his suspects, as it were.

The characters are intricate, with Clarissa Beatrice Dubose (Marisa Abela, Back to Black) topping the list of colorful characters. As the youngest of the group, she’s the one still learning the ropes of the espionage lifestyle. She’s also the one who calls it all out: how do you talk to anybody about anything when everything involves secrets and lies? Everything can be "black bagged," dismissed as top secret and not up for discussion.

And Clarissa is the one who is also the most playful amidst the severity of the situation. Her lie detector test with George is a terrific movie moment as she proves she knows how to play the game. And, of course, George knows better and calls her out on it.

Great stuff.

And that great cast goes on, including Naomie Harris (Moneypenny in Skyfall) as Zoe Vaughan, a therapist within British intelligence, and Pierce Brosnan (James Bond himself in The World Is Not Enough), as Arthur Stieglitz, head of the branch.

Who Picks Up the Gun?

With characters in mandated therapy sessions with Dr. Vaughan, plenty of infidelity and a focus on the health of George and Kathryn’s marriage, plus those thousands of lives at risk in a distant country, Black Bag piles on the complexity as it briskly moves along.

One of things missing here is the media. There are no cameos from BBC talking heads – or even Wolf Blitzer – as this mission escalates and George follows Arthur’s guidance: the method doesn’t matter. The result does.

The result George achieves is a rather swift and clean resolution to the espionage mission, perhaps a little too tidy for its own good as the days of the week are ticked off with on-screen title cards announcing Sunday… Monday… Tuesday. Don’t forget, George was given seven days to solve the puzzle and find the bad actor.

Then again, Black Bag ends with a brilliant punchline, a line delivered by Kathryn. It’s a demand that people dare not mess with her marriage.

So what Black Bag is all about and what is truly at stake is open to interpretation. Is it about honesty in deeply sensitive and dangerous work environment? Is about infidelity in personal relationships? Is it about trust in professional relationships? Is it about that delicate situation in a far-away land?

That’s part of the fun of Black Bag. Unlike Novocaine, which had at most three ideas, there are plenty of angles from which to view Black Bag and plenty of ideas on tap in a very slick and fashionable black bag of filmmaking.

• Originally published at MovieHabit.com.

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