Wait, director Steven Soderbergh has a second movie coming out this year? OK, Presence came out in Sundance a year earlier, but I couldn’t see it until this past January. I’d say it’s noteworthy to see two movies come out in the first three months of 2025 from a major director regardless. And yes, Soderbergh does qualify as a major director. I did come across some commentary that noted that Soderbergh is an oddity in that he’s a major director with no distinctive style. There’s no sweeping silence that Spielberg uses to tell stories, none of Tarantino’s kinetic tribute to cinematic eras others ignore, none of Scorsese’s raw energy coming from the darkest corners of the human soul. Soderbergh just seems to reinvent himself all the time, making different sorts of movies all the time. He’s the guy who shot a horror movie on an iPhone, after all.
And for Black Bag, he took on the adult spy thriller.
British Intelligence officer George Woodhouse (Michael Fassbender) gets word from his superior that someone in the Agency has stolen a software package that will do something awful–it’s not specified right away–and there are five potential suspects. One of these subjects is George’s wife and fellow agent Katheryn (Cate Blanchett), but the thing about George is he’s like a bulldog when it comes to observation, possibly the best in the Agency. Once he’s on a trail and sunk his teeth into something, he won’t be letting go anytime soon. Who is the traitor? Is it one of the managing agents, either Freddie (Tom Burke) or James (Regé-Jean Page), both of whom have access to the missing software? Could it be staff psychiatrist Zoe (Naomi Harris), who knows a lot of secrets about a lot of agents and is currently dating James? Or could it be young Clarrisa (Marisa Abela), a satellite specialist dating Freddie who knows more than she lets on? And could it even be Katheryn?
That’s the real trick here, as Black Bag depicts a world where everything is rather insular. George and Katheryn have a successful marriage, making them even the envy of some of their peers, in part because of their devotion to each other and the fact that, for these characters, the only romantic possibilities are co-workers, and spies make terrible romantic partners more often than not. But as the movie goes on, there’s more and more evidence to suggest that Katheryn is perhaps the suspect, and George may have to deal with the fact that the woman he is devoted to may be a traitor to the job if not the nation as a whole. Can he get to the bottom of this mess?
I think the thing that attracted me most to seeing this movie is the simple fact that it is a spy movie with an adult sensibility. There’s not much in the way of violence as it is more about the cerebral aspects of the job, and most spy movies go more the route of James Bond–Pierce Brosnan actually has a supporting role in this movie as the boss here–or a Mission: Impossible movie. Heck, there was an M:I trailer before this movie. But Black Bag owes more to, say, something like Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy than anything else. It’s a slow burn, and the consequences for what George is even looking into doesn’t even come around until the halfway point, and that’s where the movie really starts to get interesting.
That, it should be noted, means the characters come across as rather emotionally cold. Blanchett’s Katheryn doesn’t get a lot to do for the first half as she mostly just seems to look good for George and the audience, but her role is an important one beyond the search for whoever stole the movie’s MacGuffin. However, once the MacGuffin’s capabilities come out, the movie really shifts gears as George seems to be suddenly rather heartbroken for what he’s discovered. Should he be? There are some good twists here, and once George and Katheryn have their own big confrontation, one that does not go anything like the way people might expect it to, Black Bag really takes off. Funny thing, though: as slow and quiet as the first half is, there’s plenty of set-up for things that pay off later. It might be nice if more mature spy movies came out, but for now, Black Bag is a great example of one.
Grade: A-
0 Comments