March 25th, 2025

Lately Steven Soderburgh’s career has been a flurry of ninety minute thrillers that always have their own spin on the form. From ‘Kimi‘ to ‘Presence‘ and onto his newest feature ‘Black Bag‘ Director Soderburgh has shown what he can do with a tight budget and limited screen time. The best part? They all work.

‘Black Bag‘ in particular has the timing we’ve grown to expect from the man who can pull of the world’s best heist trilogy, and Blanchett and Fassbender as a kind of English Mr. and Mrs. Smith proof that they have the chops to challenge one another at every turn. Outside of these two stars the film packs in the stressful nature of a dinner out with friends. The politics surrounding navigating conversations with people you’ve grown to love, but not to trust as deeply as your spouse is expertly written by screenwriter David Koepp, so it’s not just the mysteriousness of the lies we tell our partners, but also they lies that we as a couple might tell our friends.

Package all of this subterfuge with the fact that they are all spies for the UK government and there are actually things that they are legally not allowed to talk about it only ups the stakes for the wheeling and dealing of how each character might be able to gain an upper hand. The best sequence of the film is the opening dinner, where George Woodhouse (Michael Fassbender) and Kathryn St. Jean (Cate Blanchett) host two other couples for dinner. George is straight with Kathryn before everyone arrives, one of their friends has betrayed their country, and he intends to find out who.

As the film evolves George shortly realises that there is one other suspect he had not considered going into the evening, his own wife Kathryn. While it certainly has many of the same set pieces as the Pitt/Jolie vehicle of 2005, it lacks the gun filled action. While I would not call the film slow, it’s all about the cards that each character is holding and playing, while navigating their inner circle, and less about how many machine guns Angelina Jolie has hidden in her walk in closet.

There are also generational differences to consider, each couple is of different ages, and has a different view point on life and how to live it, how to navigate the lies and deceit that they are forced to participate in as partners, and as spies, and where those lines need to be drawn. There’s also the powers that be checking in and moving the needle of their own accord in that the big spy boss Arthur Steiglitz (Pierce Brosnan) has his own motivations, both for the country and for his spy network. Casting Brosnan is perfect because you can immediately point to him and say “I think James Bond might be more important in this spy movie than his screen time might suggest.”

Soderburgh is one of the greats, and he continues to find success both at this budget level and this runtime. He also gets movie stars and up and comers alike to sign on to these projects, the films other four cast members Naomie Harris, Marisa Abela, Tom Burke, and Joey Award Winner Rege-Jean Page all put on wonderful performances in every terse dialogue scene they have to delve into. Each relationship has its own taughtness, each performance it’s own task, and ‘Black Bag‘ manages to show us how much the truth really matters.

3.5/5