Black Bag is the second collaboration between director Steven Soderbergh and screenwriter David Koepp in 2025, and it’s not even the end of March. The first one was Presence, a conceptual horror movie that can impress you with its visual boldness and surprise you with the finale’s emotional punch. Black Bag is a much less gimmicky movie, both in style and narrative, though it is playing variations on a theme. It’s also the superior film. Michael Fassbender and Cate Blanchett play high-ranking spies within British Intelligence, George and Kathryn, respectively. When George is told by his superiors that incredibly sensitive intel has been taken by someone in house, he’s asked to investigate who the mole might be. One of the main suspects? Kathryn.
Fassbender’s George is torn between duty and loyalty, and tries his best to thread the needle between the two. Of course, Kathryn is not the only suspect. There’s also Freddie (Tom Burke), one of George’s long time friends; a fellow spook whose seniority can’t overcome a disastrous personal life. Freddie’s girlfriend, the much younger Clarissa (Marisa Abela), also works in intelligence, and is considered another person of interest. So too is James (Rege-Jean Page), a go-getter spy who’s leap-frogged Freddie for a much-coveted promotion – that George gave him the promotion only adds more salt to the wound. Since James is dating the in-house psychiatrist, Zoe (Naomi Harris), she’s also considered someone for George to keep an eye on. With the fate of the world in the balance, George must investigates his friends, co-workers, and wife, to get to the bottom of it all.
Step one? Invite everyone over for dinner. The set piece, three couples in one dining room, is one of the more exhilarating parts of the film, and it occurs very early on. Koepp’s script is a thriller that’s light on action and high on intrigue, where crosstalk takes the place of physical altercation. George has a reputation as a master of manipulation, a veteran of the polygraph, who can tell when someone is lying whether they’re attached to the machine or not. Unbeknownst to his guests, George drugs their food (with the exception of Kathryn, of course) which lessens their abilities to keep a secret. We don’t figure out who the mole is after this scene, but we find out plenty of other things, and the night ends with an explosion of emotion that sets the ball rolling on Black Bag‘s steady surge of twists and turns.
Similar to Presence, Black Bag‘s screenplay is perhaps not as clever as Koepp seems to think it is. In both films, Soderbergh leans into what the veteran screenwriter does best (rock solid structure, dependably realized characters), and assuages everything that he fumbles (stilted dialogue, an over dependence on a plot twists). The film’s cast – which also includes Pierce Brosnan as an ornery high-ranking official who seems to have little patience and little control over his team – is high-caliber, and while the script may not be the most thrilling, it does allow them all to play something interesting, creating familiarity in shorthand and allowing us to learn about them without sacrificing the film’s lightning pace. The Koepp Special, I call it.
This includes newcomer Abela, from television’s Industry and last year’s doomed Amy Winehouse biopic Back to Black. Abela’s Clarissa is spunky and clever, and her performance goes toe-to-toe with Burke and Fassbender without any semblance of intimidation or self-consciousness. It’s a pretty common Hollywood confection to invite a beautiful young actress to invigorate a veteran cast, but Abela elevates the cliched character. Burke, a character actor who specializes in scene-stealing performances (in the case of 2019’s The Souvenir or last year’s Furiosa, he can actually steal the entire movie), does more of that here, making Freddie an irresistibly charming scoundrel who gets his comeuppance and (mostly) takes it in stride.
Fassbender and Blanchett, the undisputable stars of the movie, never work toward outshining the ensemble, but still make incredibly clear who the main attraction is. They dominate their scenes; Fassbender through a sharply reserved, well-dressed cool, and Blanchett with a five-alarm charm offensive that can turn dark at a moment’s notice. Fassbender’s George is sharply dressed, soft-voiced, and never out of step; Blanchett’s Kathryn is pure glamour. For being a director allergic to mainstream Hollywood, Soderbergh is absolutely a great director of movie stars. Julia Roberts in Erin Brockovich, George Clooney in Out of Sight and the Ocean’s franchise, even Channing Tatum in the Magic Mike films. Add Fassbender and Blanchett to this cavalry of brilliance, perfectly calibrated by Soderbergh whose innate sense of storytelling make Black Bag an absolute delight.
Directed by Steven Soderbergh