On March 13, cinemas began showing the spy thriller «Black Bag» starring Cate Blanchett and Michael Fassbender. The names of the performers alone, as well as Steven Soderbergh’s direction, make you pay attention to the new product and hope for a good movie. Let’s find out whether it is really so in the review below.
Pluses:
excellent acting performances and, as a result, interesting character interactions on the screen; a good attempt to plunge into the personal lives of spies; several well-written, beautifully shot, edited and acted scenes, such as the dinner scene or the polygraph interrogation;
Minuses:
in general, the movie offers nothing that could be surprising; some may not like the fact that the spy genre is relegated to the background;
«Black Bag»
Genre spy thriller
Director Steven Soderbergh
Starring Cate Blanchett, Michael Fassbender, Marisa Abela, Reggie Jean Paige, Naomie Harris, Tom Burke, Gustaf Skasgård, Pierce Brosnan
Premiere movie theaters
Year of release 2025
Website IMDb
British intelligence agent George Woodhouse receives a list of possible traitors from a colleague, because someone from the department has stolen a dangerous macGuffin called Severus, which risks falling into the wrong hands and causing a lot of trouble. Among the suspects is George’s wife and part-time colleague Katherine, who is about to leave on a business trip. No one will tell what kind of business trip, not even her husband, and in return they will receive only the code «black bag», which means absolute secrecy of the mission. Well, at least it’s not «if I tell you, you’ll have to be killed» —, and that’s good.
Given the circumstances, Wodehouse casts his net in the right directions to find the mole. But there’s a catch in this story, at least according to the agent — he loves his wife endlessly and is willing to kill for her. She seems to reciprocate. So what will the protagonist do if his wife turns out to be a traitor?
In his new film, Steven Soderbergh clearly demonstrates, even ironically, that the profession of spy has many subtleties and is far from adventurous Bond you know, the kind with all those, not to put too fine a point on it, cool cars, the pretentious «shake but don’t mix» and gorgeous women ready to jump into bed at the first opportunity. What about looking at this job from the perspective of combining it with your personal life? What if both spouses are spies? How do you live in a marriage in the face of the constant adherence to the postulate «trust but verify»?
It would be impossible to say that Soderbergh and screenwriter David Koepp, for whom this is their third project together in the last three years, have twisted the spy intrigue to the maximum, that is, to the point where the viewer’s jaw drops. And they clearly did not set this goal for themselves. Rather, it looks like an opportunity to practice in the currently trendy genre, performed on autopilot, with a wealth of filmmaking experience. But the trick is that the genre is secondary and, in a sense, deceptive.
And that experience, the safety margin of Soderbergh and Koepp, backed up by the excellent acting performances of the star performers, is enough to spend a pleasant hour and a half at the screen.
In the end, it doesn’t really matter what was stolen or who the damned traitor is in the end. It is much more interesting for the authors to delve into the interaction of the characters, to observe their behavior in the circumstances, and how much they trust each other, what they say and how they feel about what they say. A wonderful dinner party scene (the first of two, although the final one is quite spectacular) is telling, when the spy couple’s colleagues visit them, and due to certain actions of Fassbender’s character, their evening ceases to be tedious.
To avoid spoilers, we’ll leave the very essence of the local plot and the traitor’s motives to the viewer’s discretion. Again, it’s important to understand that this story is dominated by the interaction of the characters, in particular Fassbender and Blanchett, and not by the spy passions, which have clearly faded into the background. And given this approach, acting plays a fundamental role in the narrative. The movie is definitely in perfect order with this.
Michael Fassbender seems to have migrated here from his previous spy thriller «The Agency» because his activities are far from dynamic field missions and are again limited to a stuffy office space and the walls of his own home (with occasional fishing trips). By the way, the show from Paramount+ with Showtime also touched on the topic of personal life through the prism of the spy profession: if you recall, the main character was divorced, and his relationship with his teenage daughter left much to be desired. A lot of attention was also paid to love in the crucible of espionage.
As in «The Agency», the film has a psychologist and a head of the department — there it was the gray-haired Richard Gere, here it is the equally presentable veteran Pierce Brosnan. It is impossible not to mention the beautiful Cate Blanchett, who shines on the screen in every sense, and her participation in the silly «Borderlands» can now be considered a temporary blur. The performers of the secondary roles are also in their places — you can’t blame anyone for a banal performance.
«Black Bag» deserves attention at least because of the participation of Michael Fassbender and Cate Blanchett, who make an interesting pair of spies in love. The film is far from the frivolous action and marital antagonism of «Mr. and Mrs. Smith» with Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, which is definitely not a problem in this case. And it’s much better than primitive chewing gum like the spy nonsense «Black Doves».
In general, it would have been more appropriate to release Soderbergh’s film a month earlier, on Valentine’s Day. Unless, of course, you take into account the fact that at one point you might be served lead instead of a delicious dinner.
Spelling error report
The following text will be sent to our editors: