Black Bag Review: Do You Take This (Hit)Man?

A classy cast and slick filmmaking mark Black Bag, Steven Soderbergh’s tale of married spies, as a wickedly fun dissection of fidelity.

A mere two months later, Soderbergh unveils Black Bag. His new spy thriller sees the director back on narratively familiar turf in the vein of Haywire, but where that film offered unfiltered action setpieces with minimal commentary, Black Bag’s delights are more psychological, marrying Agatha Christie high concepts to deep distrust that’s more Edward Albee than John Le Carré. Who’s Afraid of Mata Hari?, if you will.

Soderbergh and screenwriter David Koepp keep to their Presence playbook, and lure you in with the promise of standard genre thrills, before delving into more pressing and relatable concerns. In a suave long take, the camera follows intelligence agent George (Michael Fassbender) into a nightclub to rendezvous with a contact (Gustaf Skarsgård, the most chameleonic member of that family). He efficiently exposits that a security breach has occurred, and George is none too smiley about having to weed the mole out, especially when one of the five suspects is his own wife, fellow agent Kathryn St. Jean (Cate Blanchett).

The casting is canny; if mere mortals such as we could boast such an elegant and sensual spouse as either of this pair, there’s no way we’d give them up for king and country. Black Bag knows this, and the thrill lies in watching them (unknowingly or otherwise) work the system to save their love. Black Bag features covert AI tech, Russian warmongering and a potential nuclear meltdown, but all this is window dressing to the potential for heartbreak.

As Presence used the form of horror to explore the hidden lives of one suburban household, so Black Bag uses the baggage of the spy thriller to plunge into the inner workings of a marriage. It may feature a one-time James Bond and Miss Moneypenny in its supporting cast, but these characters hang off each other’s every word, rather than the sides of skyscrapers or cliffs. George and Kathryn invite their friends/colleagues/potential rats to dinner and truth serum-laced digestifs in the hopes of loosening lips, and Soderbergh and Koepp actively invite comparison to And Then There Were None. The table of younger professionals defer to their more experienced and suave hosts, but Koepp’s ripe dialogue keeps you watching to see who’ll stab whose back first.

As a wedge is driven between couple Freddie (Tom Burke, channelling his Orson Welles act from Mank) and Clarissa (Back To Black’s Marisa Abela), while the overambitious Stokes (Regé-Jean Page) and secretive shrink Vaughn (Naomie Harris) play their cards closer to their chests, George can only smirk behind his thick-rimmed glasses, evoking memories of Michael Caine in The Ipcress File. Meanwhile, Blanchett’s flirty turn guards Kathryn’s secrets from husband and audience alike.

The ‘black bag’ of the title is the term used when an agent can’t divulge information to a colleague for fear of jeopardizing their mission. It’s an ideal metaphor for marriage: you keep some things hidden to preserve the status quo. When Kathryn leaves on an overnight mission to an undisclosed location, and George enquires about it, all she can say is: black bag. Just like George, Soderbergh suspects all his characters of lying. His filmography is a catalogue of exposés of people living in lies and performances, from thieves donning disguises to whistleblowers working against their employers, but the world of espionage offers his most literal variation on this theme yet.

All the major players live and work in gilded settings, their good looks matched by their homes’ classy decor. Yet, the tangled webs that lie underneath threaten to trip them up at every turn. Koepp must have had as much fun writing this twisted nonsense as the cast have playing it. Even with a dialogue-heavy script, a conspiracy boards’ worth of twists and turns keeps Black Bag moving at a heady click, ensuring its 94 minutes just zip by.

The acclaimed cast is having lots of fun (Pierce Brosnan should only ever work with auteurs in genre mode), but Soderbergh is positively giddy behind the camera. His playfulness in all aspects of the filmmaking is what gives Black Bag its enigmatic, energetic fizz. Many scenes are just characters talking in a room, but Soderbergh shoots every face from every conceivable angle, giving himself enough freedom to find the right tone in the edit.

Black Bag isn’t exactly slow-burn, but the filmmaking is more explosive than any onscreen action. Some audiences might feel shortchanged on that front, but Soderbergh fans will delight at his continued ability to wrangle genre convention to his own ends. The film’s most thrilling setpiece sees some of the characters undergoing polygraph tests. It takes a master to make a character sitting and answering ‘yes’ or ’no’ feel cinematic, but Soderbergh duly does. His focus on details to extricate in the edit, plus Fassbender’s casting, evoke memories of The Killer. Like Fincher, Soderbergh relishes using genre expectations to investigate how to use filmmaking methods old and new to maximum dramatic effect.

As one would expect from good spies, everyone in Black Bag is aware of the cameras surveilling them. From sex, lies and videotape to now, Soderbergh indulges his fascination with how the camera plays its part in manufacturing illusions. Where the characters in Presence couldn’t see the ghost that haunted them, Black Bag is about people who are too aware, both of themselves and those surveilling them, and thus live double lives to preserve themselves. Even Soderbergh himself lives lies; as the credits roll to announce the camerawork by DoP Peter Andrews and the editing of Mary Ann Bernard, the casual viewer may not know that these are pseudonyms for the director. Soderbergh’s handiwork is all over the deliciously twisty Black Bag, even in ways you might not realize. He really would have made a great spy.

Black Bag will be released in US theatres, in UK & Irish cinemas, and globally in theaters on March 14, 2025.