In Black Bag, trust issues are part of the job description. The spy thriller from director Steven Soderbergh — his second film released in 2025 following hot on the heels of (checks notes) January’s Presence — continues to show why he’s one of our most prolific filmmakers. Black Bag feels different from other theatrical releases, perhaps because it perfectly exemplifies the “they don’t make them like this anymore” mentality. Even a threadbare axiom still has value, doubly so when it becomes the foundation for what’s easily the year’s best movie so far.
Black Bag sets up its central plot as expeditiously as its lightning-fast 90-minute run time. British Intelligence expert George Woodhouse (Michael Fassbender) is tipped off by a fellow agent (Gustaf Skarsgård) that someone within the agency is a mole, having stolen an experimentally (and highly dangerous, as they all are) computer program. George has roughly a week to track down the leaker before the world goes to hell.
The immediate suspects are a quartet of George’s young co-workers, of whom are involved with one another on some romantic level or another. Clarissa Dubose (Marisa Abela) is a sharp-as-a-knife tech expert, Freddie Smalls (Tom Burke) is a gruff asshole manager of sorts, Dr. Zoe Vaughan (Naomie Harris) is the organization’s in-house shrink, and Col. James Stokes (Regé-Jean Page) is George’s right-hand man. While deducting bullshit from well-trained 30 and 40-somethings is one thing, figuring out if your spouse is in over their head is another, which is George needs their help to suss out if his wife Kathyrn St. Jean (Cate Blanchett, electric here) has misstepped. When unaccounted hours away from the house are explained away under the pretense of a mission, a titular “Black Bag” operation, it’s hard to get one’s bearings, even for a mastermind spy like George.
After a cleverly staged dinner party that works wonders for doling out expositional dialogue and establishing the ensemble, Soderbergh gets to work in a meticulous manner reflective of George himself. While there’s an indication there’s a much larger world outside of the work our characters are doing, the director keeps the events smaller in scale. While discovering the mole might lead to saving the world, Black Bag is more focused on interrogating and exploring the intricacies of our relationships with our partners. “I would do anything for you,” George remarks to Kathyrn early on. “Would you kill for me, George?” she retorts. There’s an immediate sense they would, and Soderbergh keeps the focus on exploring the lengths both parties will go to protect one another.
What’s sexier than someone loving you so much they’d kill for you? Soderbergh knows the inherent value of this, and thus, the film takes on a deeply dangerous sexual tone, so much so that Black Bag often feels like the “Mark me down as scared and horny!” bit from Bill Hader on Saturday Night Live. Soderbergh even leans into this by playing up the close-ups he employs, letting Blanchett and Fassbender’s faces, and critically their eyes, do the talking for them. As such, Black Bag is at its absolute best when the two are on screen together, letting them both engage in such a duplicitous dance made all the better by longtime Soderbergh collaborator David Holmes’ propulsive score.
Soderbergh’s young cast is a veritable who’s who of stunning talent. Burke, coming off a stellar performance in Furiosa, gets to be a right asshole, albeit in a slightly different register than what he did in The Souvenir. Harris is more reserved, channeling elements of her Craig-era portrayal of Moneypenny. The real standout for many will likely be Abela. Fans of Industry have long known she had the goods as she slinks around the office, looking just as concerned here as she is in the superlative HBO drama. Yet even then, she steals away the movie from Blanchett and Fassbender in places as she perfectly executes some of the best lines in David Koepp’s airtight screenplay.
Rarely has such a simple concept been as well-perfected and intelligently presented as in Black Bag. Stewards of Soderbergh’s work have long known that even when the director is in his experimental phase, he can turn out one interesting project after another. But Black Bag is an excellent reminder to the less-aware general public that he’s nothing less than a seasoned master showing no signs of slowing down any time soon.
