Movie Review: 'Black Bag' is an Elegant, Ingenious Spy Thriller
Steven Soderbergh is on a roll in 2025 with Presence and now Black Bag.
Black Bag
Directed by Steven Soderbergh
Written by David Koepp
Starring Michael Fassbender, Cate Blanchett, Rege-Jean Page, Marisa Abela
Release Date March 14th, 2025
Published March 19th, 2025
Black Bag stars Michael Fassbender and Cate Blanchett as George and Kathryn Woodhouse, married British spies. George, we are told, is a human lie detector, his job is reading people and weeding out their lies. George’s latest task is locating a traitor within the spy ranks. Someone is trying to steal a dangerous weapon to sell it to terrorists targeting Russia. After a brief meeting with a fellow spy in the field, George is given a list of names of potential traitors. George’s wife, Kathryn, is on the list.
In order to suss out the traitor, George has invited the people on the list to come to his and Kathryn’s home for dinner. He is going to play a game with them that will reveal their deep dark secrets. The dinner guests include Freddie (Tom Burke), George’s friend and immediate subordinate, Clarissa (Marisa Abela), a computer expert who happens to be dating Freddie, Dr. Zoe Vaughan (Naomie Harris), a psychiatrist who is treating everyone except for George, currently, and Col. Stokes, a rising star in the agency who happens to be dating Dr. Vaughan.
The dinner is filled with revelations and some fireworks but ultimately doesn’t reveal enough to determine who the traitor is. And, unfortunately for George, evidence appears to point toward Kathryn due to her telling a lie to George and her sudden mission in Zurich who is ‘Black Bag’ meaning she cannot tell George or anyone what the mission objective is. Naturally, there are twists and turns and set ups and betrayals, it’s all well constructed spy stuff with misdirections and red herrings a plenty.
Spy movie tropes abound in Black Bag but since this is a movie directed by Steven Soderbergh the genre elements are elevated by his stylish, elegant, and ingenious approach to genre filmmaking. Much like what he did earlier this year in the ghost movie, Presence, Soderbergh takes the familiar and elevates it with style, manipulating the tools of filmmaking to the best of his abilities to craft a spy movie that feels fresh and unique even among a sub-genre as crowded as the spy movie.
Black Bag features arguably the best performance of Michael Fassbender’s career. Fassbender has long been a talented actor but few directors have been able to penetrate the surface handsomeness of Fassbender. Soderbergh takes that surface appeal and uses it to craft a character of remarkable depth and few words. Fassbender acts with his eyes and clenched jaw for most of the movie. Wearing thick, black rimmed glasses, a turtleneck and tweed jacket combo, Fassbender looks like an English Professor but his eyes demonstrate a man whose mind works with clockwork precision. His measured words and tone are used only as needed and it lends an air of mystery that only helps Fassbender deepen this character.
Cate Blanchett, on the other hand, is snake-like, charismatic, and dripping with contempt for the lesser beings around her. That does not include George, whom she clearly loves and respects, even as she may be manipulating him as part of a larger scheme. Their marriage is intriguing, sexy, and strangely sweet at its core. Blanchett and Fassbender have explosive chemistry and it’s exciting to watch them maneuver through this intelligently crafted spy thriller plot.
The rest of the cast is elevated by working with Fassbender and Blanchett at their best. Marissa Abela is particularly good as Clarissa, a wildcard whose unpredictability is rooted in a desire to be duplicitous but lacking the kind of tools that the other suspects have in spades. She’s not a spy, remember, she’s a computer expert. Naomie Harris is hard to read and has many spiky interactions with the other actors via scenes of her in her professional capacity as a shrink trying to tend to a group of spies. Harris’s character has elements of plot functionality, i.e being a tool for furthering the story, but Harris more than manages to overcome this to craft a memorable character.
I adore Black Bag. It’s a classic spy movie that succeeds simply because it is so smartly crafted and well acted. Black Bag is proof that a great director can take the familiar elements of genre, seemingly tired tropes, and elevate them with style, pacing, editing and casting. Steven Soderbergh appears to be trying to prove my thesis that the problem in Hollywood isn’t the recycling of plots and premises but a lack of commitment to using craft and wit to elevate the familiar to something that feels fresh, new and exciting.
Find my archive of more than 24 years and more than 2000 movie reviews at SeanattheMovies.blogspot.com. Find my modern review archive on my Vocal Profile, linked here. Follow me on Twitter at PodcastSean. Follow the archive blog on Twitter at SeanattheMovies. Join me on BlueSky, linked here. Listen to me talk about movies on the I Hate Critics Movie Review Podcast. If you’ve enjoyed what you have read, consider subscribing to my writing on Vocal. If you’d like to support my writing, you can do so by making a monthly pledge or by leaving a one time tip. Thanks!
About the Creator
Sean Patrick
Hello, my name is Sean Patrick He/Him, and I am a film critic and podcast host for the I Hate Critics Movie Review Podcast I am a voting member of the Critics Choice Association, the group behind the annual Critics Choice Awards.
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Comments (1)
Oh, I loved that movie as well, Sean. Great review, as always.