Steven Soderbergh is one of my favorite filmmakers to talk about with more novice movie watchers/reviewers. He’s maybe the best example I’ve seen of a director who can take a well know type of story and find a way to make it just a little better than any other film in that genre. Black Bag is a perfect example: this is C+ forgettable streaming fodder without Soderbergh’s talents, but his mere involvement shoots the film to the best film of the spring so far, competing with his other 2025 film Presence. Ghost stories, spies. My guy can do anything!
The title is the safe word in order to drop a conversation that could get married spy couples like George Woodhouse (Michael Fassbender) and Katherine St. Jean (Cate Blanchett) in trouble with MI-5 compromising a mission. Woodhouse’s latest project is to find a mole in Arthur Stieglitz’s (Pierce Brosnan) department. To do so, Woodhouse (a master psychoanalyzer of people) and St. Jean organize a dinner with the suspects: as happens, two other couples. Col. James Stokes (Rege-Jean Page) is dating a therapist Dr. Zoe Vaughan (Naomie Harris), and Freddie Smalls (Tom Burke) is in a torrential on the rocks partnership with Clarissa Dubose (Marisa Arbela). And, perhaps, as Woodhouse’s superior informs him, Katherine might not just be a “loving wife” as well, muddying the waters. No black bags here, methinks.
So what is the special Soderbergh recipe? Film history and flexibility first and foremost, as he can adapt to telling any type of story. For this one, befitting a spy thriller, we’re awash in greys and darkness, a haze covering the movie as we tread into the treacherous waters of discovering a mole in a spy organization. But because Soderbergh has probably watched all the spy thrillers that ever existed, he walks a new road on a familiar story, a fusion of Tinker Tailor Solider Spy and Mr. & Mrs. Smith, knowingly so. As an example: the opening sequence sees a spy walking through a nightclub of smoking hot Londoners. All your instincts indicate tell you there’s going to be either a blood bath, or a sex scene: but this set up is merely there to grab your attention, so you are laser focused when the handler reveals what has happened. Another big part of Soderbergh’s recipe is brilliant editing. A man as precise as he is naturally wonderful at putting together a mystery box like this together in the most entertaining way possible, within the frameworks of things the audience has seen before. Being a spy movie, you know there’s gonna be some sort of intense interrogation of some kind right? Black Bag has maybe the best put together interview/lie detector sequence I’ve seen since this masterwork, weaving through several characters, dropping information and joy in equal measure.
The secret sauce of Soderbergh’s Black Bag recipe is partnerships. David Koepp and Soderbergh have worked together a lot these past couple years. Koepp’s work is a Rorshach test of your directing skills: if you’re a bad director, you get 2017’s the Mummy, soulless and awful. But if you’re a famous director named Steven? You get stuff as great as Kimi, this one, and a little dinosaur indie gem, the rock solid base the dialogue heavy Black Bag needs to work as well as it does. The other partnerships are with its leads, all very happy to be here and perfectly cast. Fassbender and Blanchett make you believe in their partnership, despite all the obstacles threatening the trust they’ve built. Tom Burke and Naomie Harris have on the DL been making every movie they show up in 10% better, making Black Bag 20% better with their involvement. And Rege Jean Page and Marisa Arbela get to jump from streaming to the big screen, making a name for themselves in a good way. I’m happiest for Arbela, who gives the movie an open hearted energy missing from all the duplicity in the other characters around her.
If you give Black Bag your attention, it’s going to be a rip roaring blast. I hope you all do too, because if this is a hit, it means we’re getting more Steven Soderbergh in our lives, also just better for everyone. Unless you don’t like Ocean’s Eleven, Traffic, sex lies and videotape, Erin Brockovich, The Informant, etc. And frankly, if you don’t like most of those films, just go back to whatever streaming service makes you happiest and probably stop reading my reviews, cause I’m just gonna make you angrier and angrier.