Black Bag

Michael Fassbender and Steven Soderbergh

Steven Soderbergh's Black Bag is the most accomplished and entertaining film of 2025, thus far, and Soderbergh's most successful venture since The Knick. David Koepp's screenplay is a canny mixture of espionage and mystery tropes chiefly set in London. Michael Fassbender and Cate Blanchett play MI6 agents in a long term relationship. A colleague of Fassbender's, who will soon turn up dead, informs him that a workmate is involved in treasonous activity and that one of the suspects is his missus. So, Fassbender must work like Smiley to uncover the rat. No actor working today has as imperturbable a surface and Fassbender, with gleeful malice, replays the robot from the Alien films. This works fine because Blanchett is on hand to give the film its romantic dash and regal mystery. The two have a brittle and biting chemistry that recalls the romantic leads of Dorothy Sayers and Dashiell Hammett mysteries.

The other trope Koepp borrows from mystery writers is having all the suspects assembled, twice yet, around a table. Add a dash of truth serum to the tikka masala, and Koepp and Soderbergh are able to generate some twists and genuine humor from some old recipes. The script regurgitates the usual saw that intelligence agents are amoral backbiters, constantly vying to be the alpha dog. Nothing new, but Soderbergh has upped the ante in the elitist lifestyle of his players. Blanchett dresses like the starlet she is and Fassbender looks slick in his bespoke Dunhill suits. The supporting players are all superb, especially the up and coming Marisa Abela who is all tightened sphincter and sulphur. Rarely has mendacious duplicity been this entertaining.

From the film's first shot, a winding descent into the basement of a club, Soderbergh, who served as his own camera operator on the picture, displays more of an emotional involvement than is usual from this very cerebral filmmaker. Since his debut, Sex, Lies, and Videotape, Soderbergh has dealt ambivalently with modern life, championing glimmers of humanity amidst an increasingly dehumanized environment. The surveillance state of Black Bag fits well within his dour worldview. He views the pampered denizens of the intelligence community with a gimlet eye, distaste mixed with fascination. David Holmes, a longtime collaborator of the director, offers a nervy score that adds to the film's palpable air. A brisk and enthralling 94 minutes.