Black Bag (3 ½ stars out of 4)
When you break it down, Steven Soderbergh’s “Black Bag” becomes a bizarre recipe of pop culture elements: start with a “Mission: Impossible”-style save the world premise, but set it inside a British Intelligence internal subculture that feels like a more adult version of TV’s “The Office.”
Next, execute the plot like a classic Agatha Christie murder mystery, but filter it through the dark and moody classic Soderbergh visual style.
Finally, throw in some strong performances from a few familiar faces and a killer score from “Ocean’s Eleven” composer David Holmes, and you have a fun, fun thriller.
The film opens with an extended one-take shot that follows a mysterious figure through a dark night club to meet a contact. Eventually, after navigating various stairways, hallways, and club rooms, all swamped with suffocating sound and energy, George Woodhouse (Michael Fassbender) steps out into an alley and gets his mission: someone in British Intelligence has stolen a critical cyber-weapon named Severus, and he has one week to find out who.
The catch? His wife Kathryn (Cate Blanchett) is on the short list of suspects.
What follows is a Christie-like gathering of interconnected characters, in this case, a small group of people who all work for the agency. To sort out the potential culprits, George first stages a dinner party, where we meet a group of behind-the-intelligence types like Freddie (Tom Burke), Clarissa (Marisa Abela), James (Regé-Jean Page), and Dr. Zoe Vaughan (Naomie Harris), the agency’s psychologist.
It could have been the setting for the whole film, but the dinner scene only gets “Black Bag” rolling. Over several days, various interactions, and a few tense altercations, George works his way through his mission like a stiff, almost robotic British equivalent to Hercule Poirot.
But in spite of the Agatha Christie echoes, Soderberg lays on his own distinctive style, giving “Black Bag” a feel most mainstream viewers will associate with 2001’s “Ocean’s Eleven” remake. The action is sparse but impactful, and Soderberg manages to keep the viewer engaged as much with a chess-like conversation in a therapist’s office as with a tense sequence involving satellite surveillance. And the secret MVP might be Holmes, who keeps the pace with a series of percussion-heavy breaks.
All the performances are solid, including an always-welcome Harris, but Fassbender is especially fun, ramping up his usual stiff-backed posture to create a character in George that comes off like an accountant-turned-super assassin.
The only downside to “Black Bag,” at least to wider audiences, might be that Soderbergh’s film has just enough violence and scattered profanity to move the film into R-rated territory.
Regardless, coming at a slow time of year following a less-than-impressive 2024, “Black Bag” will be a welcome option to anyone looking for a movie worth watching in 2025.
“Black Bag” is rated R for scattered profanity, adult subject matter and sensuality, and brief episodes of violence.