Effortlessly Sexy
The experience of watching Steven Soderbergh’s Black Bag is like watching a Michelin chef add the finishing touches to a signature dish. The masterpiece speaks for itself. We all just get to sit back and watch the additional garnishings. This is the case with Black Bag. Everything else is already set in place. Delicious writing, divine low-lighting cinematography, and the sound of an actual heartbeat are part of the score.
George (Michael Fassbender) and Kathryn (Cate Blanchett) are British Intelligence officials who happen to be married. The term “Black Bag” is uttered anytime a question is asked that they are not allowed to answer. “Where are you off to?” George asks Kathryn. “Black Bag” she replies as she leans in to kiss him.
Their marriage is NOT “Mr. And Mrs. Smith”. They are devoted, loving, and passionate. Most of their colleagues see them as the perfect couple. They’re not wrong. Despite most unusual circumstances, this couple has made it work… up until now. George is given one week to investigate the leakage of “Severus”, a top-secret software program code that senior official Stieglitz (Pierce Brosnan) intends to use to cause a nuclear meltdown in Russia to destabilize Vladimir Putin’s government even though it may kill thousands of innocent people. Kathryn is one of the five suspects.
The “Spy Thriller” is officially a genre of its own. Black Bag takes place over a week as George investigates Kathryn as well as four others. Black Bag avoids the usual “Globe Trotting” as a plot device, opting instead to remain in London, focusing more on the continuous expansion of surveillance tech amongst one of society’s most daily discussed topics and the psychological unraveling of those on the inside struggling to remain afloat and be taken seriously.
Not long after Black Bag begins, audiences witness a twelve-minute dinner scene in George and Kathryn’s luxury kitchen amongst very low lighting. George has invited the other four suspects and drugged their food with a kind of truth serum. Agency psychiatrist Zoe (Naomie Harris), field agents James (Bridgerton’s Rege-Jean Page) and Freddie (Tom Burke), and satellite imagery specialist Clarissa (Marisa Abela) sit beside their hosts in what is an absolute masterclass in screenwriting. You feel as if your heart is out of your body and pumping blood on the table amongst the dialogue and uneasy body language.
Black Bag works in drastic comparison to other spy thrillers of late in that it’s EFFORTLESSLY SEXY. Of course, it helps that the chosen two leads are actors who continue to age like fine wine and the rest of the cast are equally gorgeous. It’s more than that, though.
The tone has such a level of SOPHISTICATION to it, for most films it would be hard to capture without feeling forced. Black Bag doesn’t suffer from this problem therefore, it can convey all its points and themes to the audience without any additional difficulty. Blanchett is just…dynamite here as always. She’s played this kind of character so many times and yet, she’s never repetitive. Something is waiting in Kathryn, some unseen yet preplanned glimmer of surprise that Blanchett shadows with her mysterious allure. A close-up of a fish Brosnan is about to eat that’s still breathing amongst Blanchett’s quietly confrontational interrogation tactics is spine-chilling.
Fassbender has been away from the screen for a few years and is just beginning his resurgence. His last great film was Steve Jobs but his work here is very reminiscent of his earliest works in which his unspoken nervousness tells the story through his haunted eyes and body language. He has the glasses and the turtlenecks and yes, the slight wrinkles that perhaps unintentionally pay an ode to the chilling performance of Pierce Brosnan.
Marisa Abela, whose acting I’m completely overwhelmed by as she continues to rise in her career is Black Bag’s tough but tender heart and occasional comic relief. Audiences who are as obsessed with “Industry” as I am and have had the fortune of seeing Marisa's performance as Amy Winehouse last year will continue to fall under her spell. The youngest of the cast, you feel for her in the dinner scene as she’s all dressed up, “Getting to sit at the big table with the grownups”. You get the sense that she struggles to be taken seriously despite her brilliance and like a lot of people, relies on the allure of seduction to reach deeper into a conversation that’s already laced with tension. The dinner ends with a betrayal towards her being mentioned and she retaliates by stabbing Freddie right through the hand. Unlike Fassbender, Blanchett’s Kathryn enjoys the chaos and Clarissa becomes an unexpected ally for George as the week progresses and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine unspokenly becomes symbolic amongst an entire world that no longer trusts each other for good reason.
“When you can lie about everything when you can deny everything, how do you tell the truth about anything?!” Clarissa demands as George enlists her help setting up an unofficial satellite redirect towards Kathryn who briefly leaves to meet someone in Zurich. There is no answer to that. But Black Bag has the good sense to invoke this question early enough so it remains at the forefront of everyone’s mind as the film progresses.
Black Bag ends right back where we started: A second dinner. Of course, there are big reveals but none so big that it comes across as fake. Nothing about Black Bag rings a single false note. Having secured 4 out of 4 stars on RogerEbert.com, I have to agree. It’s the most exciting espionage film in recent years and the first great film of 2025. I very much look forward to seeing you again. And I bet so will you!
Black Bag Review. (2025, January 30). IGN. https://assets-prd.ignimgs.com/2025/01/30/black-bag-button-1738262447466.jpg