Black Bag

Putting the cool into a big screen offering and actually having it turn out to be cool is often easier said than done. Attempts at accomplishing this feat in many instances turn out to be hokey, trite or mishandled, so its gratifying to see a filmmaker pull it off successfully. Such is the case in the latest work from director Steven Soderbergh and screenwriter David Koepp, an expertly structured, superbly executed spy thriller masterfully laced with suspense, wit, charm, class and a dash of deftly placed camp. This savvy, top-shelf story follows a group of high-ranking British intelligence officers caught up in a web of international intrigue in which carefully calculated financial, political, military and technological misdirections are...

Theres quite a bit of the John le Carré to this story of duplicity in the intelligence community. George (Michael Fassbender) is married to Kathryn (Cate Blanchett) and despite the fact that they spend much of their lives keeping secrets from one another (those are the black bag conversations that they cant have) their marriage is really quite strong - much to the envy of many of their colleagues. Its a dinner with a few of them at their home that starts the cat amongst the pigeons as George suspects that one of them is a traitor. He has been given the names of everyone around the table - and that includes his wife! They are an eclectic, aggressive, cheating and back-stabbing bunch and he has his work cut out for him, especially when he beg...

'Black Bag' is a very good spy thriller! It is a slowburn sorta film and is dialogue heavy, but neither of those things are negatives as long as it delivers - which this 2025 release certainly does. The cast are terrific, most notably Michael Fassbender and Cate Blanchett.

Marisa Abela, Regé-Jean Page, Tom Burke and Naomie Harris are great in their respective parts too. The story kept me interested all the way through, I wouldn't say it's paced to perfection as it felt a little longer than ~1hr 30mins but that's a minor complaint because it's all watchable stuff.