Black Bag

Putting the “cool” into a big screen offering – and actually having it turn out to be cool – is often easier said than done. Attempts at accomplishing this feat in many instances turn out to be hokey, trite or mishandled, so it’s gratifying to see a filmmaker pull it off successfully. Such is the case in the latest work from director Steven Soderbergh and screenwriter David Koepp, an expertly structured, superbly executed spy thriller masterfully laced with suspense, wit, charm, class and a dash of deftly placed camp. This savvy, top-shelf story follows a group of high-ranking British intelligence officers caught up in a web of international intrigue in which carefully calculated financial, political, military and technological misdirections are at work at seemingly every turn. On top of that, this cadre of colleagues is made up of diverse individuals who are allegedly good friends and/or romantic partners, though such loyalties and confidences become expendable and are conveniently swept under the rug as “black bag” considerations when they get in the way of agency operations (or, in some cases, personal agendas). To complicate matters further, it’s not always clear which puppet masters are purportedly pulling their respective strings (or why), leading to a constant shuffling of the deck of priorities and the overall clarity of their missions. And, in making all of this clandestine subterfuge work, there’s the aforementioned cool factor that causes everything to seem so inherently logical, plausible, and, above all, entertaining. Think of this as a modern-day version of “The Ipcress File” (1965) (which is said to have inspired this release), combined with elements of “An Acceptable Loss” (2018), and you’ve got a good idea of what this one is all about. Of course, none of this would have been possible without the film’s generally crisp, on-point script and the fine performances turned in by its excellent ensemble, including Cate Blanchett, Naomie Harris, Pierce Brosnan, Regé-Jean Page, Tom Burke, Marisa Abela and Michael Fassbender (in a surprisingly effective role for once, a nuanced, understated portrayal in which he’s not constantly mugging for the camera, enabling him to come across like a latter-day young Michael Caine). This production’s creators have skillfully packed a lot of punch into the picture’s economic 1:33:00 runtime, so there’s virtually no wasted footage or extraneous material bogging down the narrative of this tale, which becomes ever-more compelling the further it plays out (though, admittedly, some of the dialogue early on in the film feels a tad cryptic and overwritten, a quality that, thankfully, dissipates quickly). “Black Bag” is another genuinely fine 2025 release, lending more credence to the hope that this could well end up being a better year for movies than its woeful predecessor (not to mention a significant step up for the creative duo of Soderbergh and Koepp compared to their most recent undercooked collaboration, “Presence,” which was released earlier this year). It’s indeed cool to be cool, and this film shows us how that’s done, a fine example that many a filmmaker could learn a lot from.

There’s quite a bit of the John le Carré to this story of duplicity in the intelligence community. “George” (Michael Fassbender) is married to “Kathryn” (Cate Blanchett) and despite the fact that they spend much of their lives keeping secrets from one another (those are the “black bag” conversations that they can’t have) their marriage is really quite strong - much to the envy of many of their colleagues. It’s a dinner with a few of them at their home that starts the cat amongst the pigeons as “George” suspects that one of them is a traitor. He has been given the names of everyone around the table - and that includes his wife! They are an eclectic, aggressive, cheating and back-stabbing bunch and he has his work cut out for him, especially when he begins to suspect the real culprit it just a bit too close to home. Meantime, while he is keeping an eye on here, she is working for boss “Stieglitz” (the unimpressive Pierce Brosnan) and he is also playing games of his own. Who is up to what? Who is pulling whose strings? Well that secret is carefully unravelled over ninety minutes of well crafted spy craft here using a cast that’s well led by Fassbender but that also features a strong contribution from Tom Burke’s frankly rather unlikeable “Freddie” and an enjoyably sophisticated degree of plotting and counter-plotting, scheming and even some fishing! Initially, I feared it might be just a version of “Mr. & Mrs. Smith” but it’s darker and more intriguing than that, with no endless combat scenarios and just an hint of menace.