MOVIE REVIEW: Black Bag (dir. Steven Soderbergh, 2025)

"It's been a while since we had a traitor to dinner. At least knowingly."

Steven Soderbergh is a movie making machine, of that there is no doubt. There are very few in the film industry who can compare in terms of output over the last thirty-five years, and in terms of the high quality of those releases. Walking the tight-rope between indie invention and studio gloss, Soderbergh has carved out a niche as the modern master of the middle budget movie, and his new feature, and his second of 2025, Black Bag, is no exception.

Black Bag can best be described as a domestic potboiler elevated to the stakes of international espionage and intelligence. The film follows security services surveillance operative, George Woodhouse, played by Michael Fassbender, after he is given information that someone he works with has plans to sell a top secret device to Russian dissident terrorists. Unfortunately for Woodhouse, one of the potential suspects in this crime is his wife, Kathryn (Cate Blanchett). He invites the other suspects to a dinner party, a much younger quartet all of whom are romantically interlinked with one another. As each piece on the board attempts to out manoeuvre the other, Woodhouse has to decipher what information is real, what information is false, and who amongst this cadre is responsible for stealing and selling something known only as: Severus. Melding domestic drama, Graham Greene-esque spy antics, and a cast busting at the seams with espionage movie pedigree, Black Bag, is as smooth a ninety minute thriller as we will probably see this year.

It is easy to see what attracted Soderbergh to Black Bag. The script is one which directly poses a problem: how does one make a film ostensibly about suspected infidelity, which takes place mostly in domestic settings, into something akin with Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy or The IPRCRESS File? (The latter comparison is even more apt given how Michael Fassbender is dressed as the spitting image of Michael Caine’s famous Harry Palmer character). Soderbergh takes the route of emphasising the idea of surveillance, all encompassing and oppressive surveillance, within the visual language of the film. Black Bag is shot through intense wide angle lenses, which distort the image around the edges. This technique gives the impression of watching the events of the film through hidden cameras, especially during the overhead shots in psychiatrist, Zoe Vaughn’s (Naomie Harris) office, leaving us to wonder if the inmate details of the character’s own minds are unsafe from prying eyes beyond even their knowledge and their own secretive machinations. Even when Fassbender’s Woodhouse goes fishing, the shot choices Soderbergh makes are cold when taken at a distance and intrusive inside the body of the vehicle. The master spy can’t escape the gaze of the all seeing eye of the film itself. In tandem with this wide angle approach to cinematography, the light in the film has an exaggerated bloom akin to observing a streetlight through the condensation on your window. This combines with the film’s muted colour palette to create a modern digital take on the aesthetics of classic Cold War spy movies. You could imagine this being how a modern take on, The Spy Who Came In From The Cold, would look like this. Or perhaps one a picture George Smiley walking under streetlights streaking against the rainy night, reflecting the obfuscating systems he is caught working within. What else can we expect from a filmmaker of this calibre? At whatever budget he is working within, Steven Soderbergh always comes up with inventive approaches to the project at hand. Yet, I’m not sure that I think this cinematographic stylism goes far enough or does anything that we haven’t seen Soderbergh do better elsewhere. However, I was not, I’ll admit, entirely wowed by the film, which I think does have several issues holding it back from being a compelling work.

I think sometimes, especially in online spaces, it is easy to get over-excited about films which are a stylish throwback to an older style of middle budget film that used to be common fair in the theatre but has subsequently faded with the invention of streaming services. I have discussed phenomenon this elsewhere when I reviewed 2024’s Conclave, a few weeks ago. Which is a long winded way of saying that I wasn’t as enamoured by this as I have seen from other reviewers and commenters. On some level, I think it is because I found the film to be somewhat uncinematic. While it was visually well composed, I did not think that enough was done in order to set it apart from a very well made TV movie or series from one of the major streamers. Because Soderbergh and David Koepp’s script are so interested in the relationship between Fassbender and Blackett’s characters, and understandably so because they are a wonderfully entertaining and seductive couple, but it feels like it is to the detriment of the mystery and the escalation of tension. Pierce Brosnan’s role as Fassbender and Blanchett’s somewhat sinister Arthur Stieglitz is under-developed to a degree that we never really get a sense of who he is and what his motivations are when the big plot developments do occur, which is a shame because it is obvious that Brosnan is having a lot of fun in the role. This stretches too to the other potential suspects in the case. Marisa Abela as Clarissa is the best of this supporting cast as she creates a fully realised character around such simple traits as ‘daddy issues’ and ‘has a crush on Michael Fassbender’. But, in general, I found it hard to care about why James Stokes and Freddie Smalls (played by Regé-Jean Page, and, Tom Burke, respectively) did anything they ended up doing.

What I think is the film’s greatest flaw is the sense that we have seen Steven Soderbergh do twisty thrillers before, and he has done them to an incredibly high standard, but what, Black Bag, is missing is that extra bit of Soderbergh-y inventiveness and wit which prevents it from being particularly gripping or memorable. I did not have an unenjoyable time with the film, and because it breezes by so effortlessly and with such a high quality of technique, it is very watchable. In the moment, the film is plenty entertaining, yet, a day later, I’m not sure I’ll think much of Black Bag once I have finished this review. If you want a fun espionage throwback, I definitely recommend seeing, Black Bag. Would I say that you should rush out and see it at the cinema? Possibly not, as I cannot imagine the experience would be diminished by watching it on TV. But if you are looking for a movie to see on date night, and you are sure you can trust your partner with state secrets, you might find an enjoyable if unremarkable selection of thrills made by one of contemporary Hollywood’s most interesting, if inconsistent, voices.

Ryan Sweeney (Twitter:@thecautiouscrip/Insta: teawithzizek)

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