Black Bag (2025) review

Dir. Steven Soderbergh

By: Steve Pulaski

Rating: ★★½

Leave it to Steven Soderbergh to make a spy movie that’s sexy without being superfluously violent. These men and women are mannered. They’re conniving. They lie. They betray. They never smile. Even when the have sex, the intimacy feels like a duty more-so than an act of primality. Black Bag is Soderbergh’s second feature to be released this year — the first was Presence, told from the POV of a ghost — and fourth overall in the last three years; that’s on top of two miniseries. If anyone knows what it’s like to be so married to a profession that the banalities of life inevitably become intertwined with work, it’s the godfather of contemporary American independent cinema.

Black Bag — which refers to something classified — stars Michael Fassbender as George Woodhouse, an espionage veteran whose obsessive attention-to-detail and steely-eyed demeanor makes him the ideal point-person to investigate his coworkers. There has been a leak in a highly confidential operation, and a MacGuffin has fallen into the hands of someone thought to be trustworthy. One of the suspects is Kathryn (Cate Blanchett).

George’s recon begins with a dinner party, and it becomes readily apparent that the attendees are Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice only a few tax brackets higher. Tom Burke and Marisa Abela are lovers divided by a generation, quick to get romantic and then pivot into verbal lashings. Regé-Jean Page and Naomie Harris appear, at least on the surface, to have more chemistry, but everyone here is as attractive as they are abhorrent.

Similar to Sean Baker allowing the scene at Vanya’s mansion in Anora to breathe and run an upwards of 20 minutes, Soderbergh and screenwriter David Koepp wisely let this dinner scene go long and set the tone for a talky, relationship-driven picture. Koepp forgoes conventional plot and subplots, more-or-less allowing a stream-of-consciousness narrative to carry Black Bag for 90 dialog-driven minutes. Koepp’s script reminded me of something Neil LaBute would write; it’s rare you find someone with such contempt yet fascination with the characters they’ve created.

The great dualism of Soderbergh’s latest is the fact that you have a gaggle of great actors congregating as shifty spies whose very instincts compel them to one-up each other. It makes for some divine moments of crosstalk. But it ultimately keeps the viewer within an arm’s length for reasons I can’t quite articulate. It might be a lack of conventional action, although I never felt annoyed by the lack of a shootout or stakeout, for that matter. It also might be the copious amount of dialog, which at times feels so fussed-over that it comes across as stilted and unnatural. That’s liable to undercut your enjoyment of what Koepp no less manages to achieve.

If anything will keep you reeled in, it’s David Holmes’ delicious score. It pulsates with energy and vibes, complete with synthy, trip-hop sounds that compliment Soderbergh’s loquacious picture. Holmes knows when to dial it back and let his sounds feel more ethereal. In the same vein, he knows when to turn things up and have his sounds evoke rhythm and tension. He’s in rare form here, and his compositions dial up Black Bag even when you run the risk of not feeling engaged.

It’s incredibly difficult to be too disappointed by a low-key spy drama that even features a silver fox Pierce Brosnan playing the cantankerous boss. It’s as if the 71-year-old Mick relished the opportunity to play the alternative after flexing his chops as Bond in GoldenEye, Tomorrow Never Dies, The World is Not Enough, and Die Another Day. Soderbergh’s prolificity has now reached Woody Allen levels with me. Whether I’m overjoyed, underwhelmed, or firmly in the middle on his latest project, I relish the thought that he will make more. And even the weakest efforts (which Black Bag is not, mind you) will be worth watching at least once.

Starring: Michael Fassbender, Cate Blanchett, Tom Burke, Marisa Abela, Regé-Jean Page, Naomie Harris, and Pierce Brosnan. Directed by: Steven Soderbergh.