“BLACK BAG” (2025, 94 min., directed by Steven Soderbergh)
“I watch her and I assume she watches me,” says Michael Fassbender’s character in “Black Bag,” the new spy thriller from director Steven Soderbergh.
Fassbender’s George is sharing the spy’s secret to a working marriage: a mixture of trust and surveillance. The philosophy is shared by his wife, Kathryn, played by a wily and vulpine Cate Blanchett.
While the spy philosophy may not be for everyone, “Black Bag” is interested in doling out marriage maxims. Though Soderbergh’s latest has its fair share of labyrinthine plot twists and espionage mumbo-jumbo, the film is really as simple as that.
“Black Bag” is the most romantic movie of the year, hands down.
READ OUR REVIEW OF “MICKEY 17” HERE.
For espionage aficionados, don’t worry. It’s also got heaps of fun spy stuff. For the cynics, it’s not wholly romantic either. There’s plenty of toxic backstabbing among the complete cast of characters, like a spy’s version of an Agatha Christie novel.
The film is in its most successful mode during the latter. There are a few thrilling espionage sequences — white-knuckled satellite hijacking and high level mission briefings, everything you’d expect from your Bonds or Mission: Impossibles — but the best scenes in the film are when the colorful cast of British intelligence agents come to dinner at George and Kathryn’s.
The three couples are each entrenched in the world of espionage. George, Blanchett and Freddie are higher-up agents, Stokes and Clarissa are fresh-faced but bitterly ambitious and Dr. Zoe Vaughn is the assigned agency therapist for the lot. More than that, however, the three couples are deeply intertwined with each other, revealed in an increasingly hilarious series of escalations throughout the film.
To reiterate: If you like gossip or messy relationships, “Black Bag” is the spy movie for you.
It’s worth mentioning that “Black Bag” is scripted by David Koepp, a master of interpersonal dialogue. The ever-prolific Soderbergh has teamed up with the screenwriter for three films now, including a 2022 Zoë Kravitz thriller, “Kimi,” and “Presence,” the fantastic perspective-bending ghost story from earlier this year.
READ OUR REVIEW OF “PRESENCE” HERE.
Koepp has a great talent for writing characters that probe and prod at relationships in ways that ensure a.) drama and b.) an eerie fidelity to real life. Koepp scripts mesh well with Soderbergh’s mastery of modernity: where Koepp is great at writing people using phones, for example, Soderbergh knows how to make that mundane image compelling onscreen. For a spy movie rife with commentary on surveillance in the modern marriage, that combo soared.
Speaking of partnerships, “Black Bag” wouldn’t work at all if not for the chemistry between Blanchett and Fassbender. The two actors exude romance together, but an innate sexiness, too. In a more modern parlance, they matched each other’s freak. Both even promised they’d kill for the other in one of the movie’s more romantic moments – “That’s so hot,” gushed Marisa Abela’s Carissa.
I hope we can trust Soderbergh to keep surveilling Koepp scripts. The marriage of the two in “Black Bag” was golden.
Rating: 5/5