A British intelligence officer is tasked with identifying the traitor in his midst from a group of close colleagues—including his own wife—in Black Bag, which opens in Prague cinemas this weekend after debuting stateside last month. This old-fashioned, no-nonsense thriller doesn’t waste a second of screen time, and represents director Steven Soderbergh‘s best film in years.
A spy movie from the John le Carré mold, Black Bag stars Michael Fassbender as SIS officer George Woodhouse, styled with thick-rimmed glasses in a nod, perhaps, to the depictions of George Smiley by Alec Guinness and Gary Oldman in adaptations of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. In the film’s opening scene, he’s informed by superior Meacham (Gustaf Skarsgård) that a top-secret and dangerous piece of software code-named Severus has been leaked by their office—and it’s his job to find the culprit.
Meacham gives Woodhouse a list of five names who could be behind the leak—one of which is that of his wife and fellow operative Kathryn St. Jean (Cate Blanchett). The other four suspects also happen to be couples: young Clarissa Dubose (Marisa Abela) and her boyfriend-manager Freddie Smalls (Tom Burke), and George’s agent James Stoke (Regé-Jean Page) and his girlfriend Zoe Vaughan (Naomie Harris).
The world of spies, it seems, is somewhat incestuous: their secrecy wouldn’t play well with civilians on Tinder, and these secret agents settle for inter-office romance. But the relationships make a good out-of-office ploy for George to probe for intel, as he invites both couples for dinner and drinks with himself and his wife, spiking the chana masala with a kind of truth serum.
George doesn’t seem to get far with the dinner game—though increased tensions result in Clarissa planting a steak knife in Freddie’s hand—but he does find a rogue cinema ticket in his wife’s waste bin. It’s a lead that he’ll poke at and unravel over the course of the next few days in Black Bag, as he tracks Kathryn to a covert meeting in Brussels.
While David Koepp‘s screenplay is almost entirely plot-driven, it’s the laser-focused dissection of the central relationships that makes Black Bag such a compelling watch. Despite being personally involved, the spies cannot be entirely honest with each other; questions like ‘where were you?’ or ‘what were you doing?’ get the titular response of ‘black bag’ espionage lingo for work that you don’t have the clearance to know about.
This sets into motion a fascinating interplay where allegiance to the SIS—and by extension, the country—is neatly contrasted against the characters’ commitment to their friends and lovers. Black Bag only shows its hand by leaving one of the other characters central to the story, agency head Arthur Stieglitz (Pierce Brosnan), on the outside looking in.
Fassbender is effortlessly charismatic and immensely watchable as Woodhouse, a character who seems more devoid of human emotion here than his android David in Prometheus. That feels right for the character, and he lets on in a revealing exchange with Clarissa that it’s largely for show; underneath the ice-cold exterior, there’s a hidden passion that really drivers this character.
The rest of the cast, too, helps keep Black Bag‘s restrained storytelling interesting throughout. Burke, who turned in memorable work in last year’s Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, follows it up here with a delicious Richard Burton impersonation, while Abela (Back to Black) steals the show as the only member of the group who lays all her cards out on the table—a dangerous play in this world of spies.
Black Bag‘s dialogue-heavy narrative could have easily turned stagy, but Soderbergh’s minimalistic, chilly-cool presentation (he also shot the film, under his pseudonym Peter Andrews) perfectly matches his characterizations. Audiences expecting explosive action or hand-holding throughout the narrative may be left out in the cold, but fans of John le Carré or even Apple TV+’s Slow Horses will find a lot to like here. Kicking off 2025 with this one and Presence, Soderbergh proves there’s still plenty of ingenuity left at the cinema.
