Black Bag (Steven Soderbergh, 2025)

Black Bag is a sleek and efficient spy thriller, starring Michael Fassbender and Cate Blanchett, that doubles as a marriage story - and triples as an acting treat.

This movie is a collaboration between two artists with genuinely impressive cv’s, as it’s written by David Koepp (Mission: Impossible, Jurassic Park) and directed by Steven Soderbergh (Out of Sight, Ocean’s Eleven).

This is actually the third time they’ve worked together after the cyber thriller Kimi (2022) and the haunted house story Presence (2024).

Black Bag is set within the confines of the British intelligence community and right from the start the stakes are put in place: there is a mole in the ranks and it’s up to elite agent George Woodhouse (Fassbender) to investigate a list of five possible suspects.

Oh, wait, one of them is his wife Kathryn (Blanchett), who is also a spy, but he cannot tell her the complete truth, because a covert investigation like this belongs in the ‘black bag’ - spy speak for confidential information.

So George decides to invite the others to a home cooked dinner and take it from there.

Apart from Kathryn, there is Freddie Smalls (Tom Burke), who used to be the agency’s brightest prospect, but was held back by his mentor George from a promotion, because of his loose lifestyle, including too much drinking and cheating. So does he carry a grudge?

Freddie is currently dating Clarisse Dubose (Marisa Abela, who played Amy Winehouse in Amy), a junior surveillance expert, with a past of her own but also still with a hint of the idealism the others have lost long ago.

There is also the office psychologist Dr. Zoe Vaughan (Naomie Harris), who is in a relationship with Colonel James Stokes (Regé-Jean Page, of Bridgerton fame), who does everything by the book but is also a bit of a dark horse.

It is perhaps a little too convenient that these people are all in relationships with their colleagues, but the dinner does lead to plenty of unexpected results, which sets the rest of the story in motion.

Black Bag is a gorgeous looking movie, with lots of twists involving both the personal dynamics between the characters and a MacGuffin called Severus, which is basically a piece of computer malware that can mess up a nuclear station, and so (as you can imagine) shouldn’t fall into the wrong hands.

The movie is also an acting delight, with all the actors bringing their best game, including former-007 Pierce Brosnan as the intelligence chief, who looks as if he is thoroughly enjoying himself in the role that would be M in the James Bond-movies.

Black Bag is so entertaining, and the 93 minutes fly by so quickly, that you can forgive the filmmakers that the second (and final) dinner party feels a little bit rushed, perhaps because some of the late breaking twists are a little more rote than what’s come before.

Black Bag lacks the tragic grace notes that made Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy a stone cold classic, but what makes this movie tick is Koepp and Soderbergh’s devotion to George and Kathryn’s marriage.

Here are two people who so unequivocally love and trust each other that it would truly break our hearts if something terrible would happen to them.

Cause as Kathryn observes at some point: ‘This can only end in one way: with a dead body in the back of a car.’

I give it four stars!