Film Review: Black Bag

Spoiler-free review.

Steven Soderbergh’s latest film, 2025’s Black Bag, is stylish — I particularly took notice of what appeared to be an impressive one-take open to the film that follows lead, George (played by Michael Fassbender), walking through a club to find his boss and then they both walk out of the club to talk — and has performances from Fassbender and Cate Blanchett (who plays George’s wife, Kathryn) that you can’t look away from. Psychologically, it also intrigued me with the way George, a master of detecting someone’s lies and weaving a narrative thread through all of their utterances, and Kathryn, a capable bullshit detector herself, confronted their counterparts in the spy world. Nonetheless, I walked away from the film somewhat underwhelmed. Still, at only 90 minutes, there’s not much time in which to underwhelm.

I can’t say I’ve always been a fan of Soderbergh’s previous work, with the exception of 2011’s Contagion. Which is to say, looking through his filmography, that is the only film I’ve liked. David Koepp, on the other hand, I’ve liked quite a few of his scripts including 1991’s Toy Soldiers, 1993’s Jurassic Park (co-written), 1996’s Mission Impossible, 2002’s Spider-Man and Panic Room (heck of a year for him!), and 2005’s War of the Worlds. Black Bag is a far more intimate film than any of those aforementioned films, though, often taking place at George and Kathryn’s sleek dinner table.

The gist of the story is that George needs to learn who has leaked a top-secret software program code-named Severus. His boss (from the club) gives him a list of five suspects, not only all fellow spies, but one of the five is Kathryn herself. George, being the human lie detector, invites everyone to dinner to discern who may be the culpable party. Most notably to me was Regé-Jean Page who plays Col. James Stokes since Page played Simon on Netflix’s Bridgerton show, which I’ve been binging as of late. It was delightful to see him in a completely different role.

There are some nice red herrings thrown out that could implicate Kathryn, like her traveling to Zurich to meet with a Russian operative. It could appear that she’s trying to sell Severus to the highest bidder. Perhaps the best scene in the film, though, is toward the end when George has all of them, sans Kathryn, hooked up to a lie detector and asks them various questions. The way he then uses their answers to figure out who the leaker is was clever. At the second dinner party building up to the film’s climax where George reveals who the leaker is, there is palpable tension to learn what George has learned.

Like I said, Fassbender and Blanchett were fantastic; I’m just not sure they had quite enough to work with here, meaning, enough to take advantage of their considerable talents. I think the film is worth watching for their efforts to elevate the film, though. As far as I can ascertain, the script is wholly original, so kudos for that, too.