It was about 12 years ago that Steven Soderbergh claimed he was poised to go into permanent cinematic retirement at age 50. That has clearly not been the case, as the chameleonic auteur—whose stylistic shifts and wide range of projects have made him all but impossible to pin down—has since directed 10 feature films, a pair of television miniseries, 26 episodes of two television series, a short film, and a music video. Some retirement.

This year, Soderbergh has already directed two features. In January we saw the release of the haunted house thriller Presence, and now we have Black Bag, an old-school spy drama that feels like it could have been based on an unpublished novel by John Le Carré. Like Presence, Black Bag is short and focused, cutting right to the chase and barreling through a brisk, but complex narrative that still clocks in under 95 minutes. The story involves an investigation into a possible leak from the British government of a top-secret computer program known as Severus. (In the classic Hitchcock mold, Severus is a Macguffin, driving the plot but utterly unimportant in and of itself except that we know lots of people might die if it gets out in the open.) George Woodhouse (Michael Fassbender), a scrupulous and fastidious MI6 intelligence officer, is assigned to investigate the leak. In the film’s opening sequence, the suspects are assembled for dinner like an Agatha Christie lineup: Freddie Smalls (Tom Burke), a brash and unapologetic spy who is in a relationship with Clarissa Dubose (Marisa Abela), who specializes in satellite imagery. Another agent, James Stokes (Regé-Jean Page), is involved with the department’s psychologist, Dr. Zoe Vaughan (Naomie Harris). And the final suspect is none other than George’s wife, Kathryn St. Jean (Cate Blanchett), to whom he is completely committed, but on whom he must nevertheless spy.That kind of divided loyalty is the defining trait of the film’s conflicted characters, all of whom are more interconnected than we first realize.

When George and Kathryn have them over for a carefully prepared dinner at their luxury London townhouse, it provides ample visual opportunity for basking in the amber-hued set design as backdrop to the interpersonal squabbling and the possible revelation of closely guarded secrets. Not enough is revealed, and George must continue searching, which at one point involves his convincing Clarissa to allow him access to a satellite without official permission, which may have created an opportunity for further leaks. There is also a cracker-jack sequence in which he hooks all of the characters up to a lie detector, as well as numerous showdowns between Zoe, in her official psychologist capacity, and several of the suspects. And Pierce Brosnan is on hand to lend additional elegance in his role as a high-level supervisor.

The screenplay by David Koepp (who also wrote Presence) is crisp and sharp-tongued; because there so little at stake narratively in terms of what has happened, everything rides on the how, which is why the performances are so important. As George and Kathryn, Michael Fassbender and Cate Blanchett are top-notch, playing every move in a way that is cool and calculated. They are beautiful people in beautiful clothes surrounded by beautiful set design (even the office spaces are modernist chic), which is one of the keys to the film’s enjoyable shallowness. There is no chance that we take any of this seriously, which gives us room to revel in the entertaining impossibility of it all. It is curious, though, that when you dig just below the surface, Black Bag is about nothing less than the sanctity of marriage. George and Kathryn, for all their hard-edges professionalism and commitment to the cause, are above all committed to each other, which stands out against those around them, who are promiscuous and dishonest and treacherous. In a profession that requires—nay, relies on—lying, they are truthful to each other and make no bones about it. When Kathryn tells George that she would kill for him, she means it, and even though it sounds cold and ruthless, it is really a confession of just how deeply and inextricably linked they are.

Copyright © 2025 James Kendrick

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