‘Black Bag’ is a delightful look at spying and marriage
Steven Soderbergh’s latest is a compact, very entertaining spy thriller.
Black Bag is one of those movies that blasts in, does everything it needs to do in its 90-minute running time, and blasts right back out. The film is a tight, exciting spy thriller with a side of commentary about modern marriage but not an ounce of fat on it.
The film was directed by Steven Soderbergh, marking his second film of the year (there may be a third, depending on how soon The Christophers gets finished); like the domestic ghost story Presence, from just two months ago, this one was written by David Koepp, a longtime collaborator of the director’s.
Black Bag centers on a trio of couples, all based in London and all employed, in one capacity or another, by an unnamed elite spy agency.
George (Michael Fassbender) and Kathryn (Cate Blanchett) are long-married spies, and it’s clear that questions of whether work or their marriage comes first have long been a part of their identity as a couple, especially when they’re able to answer any questions about what they were up to the night before with simply, “Black Bag.”
We’ve seen this type of dynamic quite a bit in the past, including multiple versions of Mr. And Mrs. Smith, as well as The Americans, but Soderbergh and Koepp find a different way to tell that story.
The other couples are Freddie and Clarissa (Tom Burke and Marisa Abela) and James and Zoe (Rege Jean-Page and Naomie Harris.) The six gather in two memorable dinner party scenes, at the beginning and end of the film.
The seventh character is their boss, played by Pierce Brosnan in a role that’s funny both in its skewering of his Bond history, and hilarious on its own merits in his all-around grumpiness. Naomie Harris is also a 007 veteran, having played Moneypenny in the last three Daniel Craig Bond films.
There’s a mystery afoot and reason to believe there’s a traitor among the team, someone who’s killing people while trying to get their hands on “Severus,” a spyware device that can destory nuclear reactors. The specifics of that McGuffin don’t really matter, except for the possibility that one character might betray their partners.
It’s a beautiful picture, and the production design is first-rate, all sleek offices and impeccably decorated apartments.
The cast is strong across the board, especially Fassbender and Blanchett as a long-married couple with lots of chemistry. If you were worried about Fassbender’s efficacy as a leading man, after that terrible Taika Waititi soccer movie, this marks a strong comeback for him, although Blanchett needs no comeback, since she never really left.
The film makes great use of a couple of TV stars, who the movies haven’t known what to do with so far for whatever reason. Jean-Page broke out a few years ago on the first season of Bridgerton, and in a successful SNL hosting stint, but he left the Netflix costume show quickly and hasn’t done much since, with his most prominent movie role in the odious The Gray Man.
And Abela, of the great HBO series Industry, gets a fine showcase, following her poorly-received (but generally underrated) Amy Winehouse biopic Back to Black, last year.
After several years, after his brief retirement, making films and the occasional miniseries for streaming services, the wildly prolific Steven Soderbergh is back in theaters with both (and possibly all three) of his 2025 films. This is the sort of tight thriller that really deserves to dominate the box office for the first few weeks of spring, although I don’t it actually will.