Black Bag Review: A Low-Energy ‘Thriller’

Steven Soderbergh is one of the more interesting filmmakers working today, and in many respects also a fascinating career case study of the intersection of expectation and execution.

With his high-level craftsmanship and workaholic propensities, Soderbergh lands somewhere between independent-minded auteur and perhaps the most talented, prized version of an old-fashioned, studio-system director working today. His personal interests and tastes often lean to the intellectual (witness the sprawling, two-part Che), but he’s no arthouse cinema snob. He possesses a crackerjack genre skillset — of course most richly evident in the hugely successful Ocean’s trilogy, which surfs along on a wave of effortless coolness and playful swagger, but also highly present in movies like 2011’s Haywire and 2022’s Kimi. He’s not at all standoffish with modern audiences, very much wanting to meet them where they are and deliver delight and satisfaction.

Over the course of several recent collaborations with screenwriter David Koepp, inclusive of the aforementioned Kimi and last year’s moody, back-foot supernatural drama Presence (which left me a bit cold, despite its imaginative staging and technical proficiency), Soderbergh has shown an interest in moving away from (or at least pressing pause on) any serious social statement, and reconnecting with more diversionary pleasures — and certainly with trying to locate and exercise economic and entertaining storytelling that can connect in the theatrical marketplace.

His most recent effort, the spy thriller Black Bag, dips into this same realm, and lands somewhere in the middle in terms of its accomplishment. Another slightly cool-to-the-touch, low-energy, air-quote thriller, the movie is more interested in chessboard intrigue than any infusion of action. To this end, Black Bag works best — despite its high-wattage leads, and Soderbergh’s characteristic injection of cinematic elements — almost as a dramatic chamber piece that just happens to be about spies and the usual cloak-and-dagger high-tech, high-stakes stuff.

The story centers on George Woodhouse (Michael Fassbender), a counterintelligence officer in the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre tasked with investigating the leak and possible sale of a top-secret software program code-named Severus. Complicating matters is the fact that one of the five possible suspects in the theft is his wife, Kathryn St. John (Cate Blanchett), who also works as a high-ranking governmental security officer.

Part of George’s legend, and what makes him so good at his job, is that he supposedly can always tell when someone is lying (shades of Poker Face here), so he invites the other four suspects over for dinner with Kathryn, and sets in motion a sort of test to figure out the source of the leak or compromise. The group of co-workers consists of Freddie Smalls (Tom Burke), a case officer with a messy personal life; Clarissa Dubose (Marisa Abela), a signals intelligence and satellite imagery specialist who is involved with Freddie but not particularly happy with their relationship; James Stokes (Regé-Jean Page), a fellow counterintelligence officer and military colonel; and Dr. Zoe Vaughan (Naomie Harris), a staff psychiatrist whose patient roster intersects with several of the parties.

As things proceed, George finds out several things about his wife, including by using a satellite to track her on a clandestine work trip. The rest of the characters and their inter-relationships, meanwhile, are further sketched out, as parties jostle and position themselves in an effort to curry favor with George, or obfuscate his determinations. The film concludes by circling back for another dinner party — this one with even higher stakes.

The style of Black Bag is modern but not exactly snappy, or edgy. In terms of its design and look, sleek workspaces are contrasted with warmer environments, like George and Kathryn’s apartment, providing clear subconscious statement about where one should deposit their trust.

While it’s not a comedy per se, there’s a self-defining dry wit present throughout the picture that, in an odd way, comes to be a bit limiting. The reason is that all of the film’s characters seem to possess elements of this same personality trait, which makes some of the interplay a little one-note, and the twists if not exactly unenjoyable then at least a bit neutered.

Is Black Bag, more than a bit tongue-in-cheek at times, meant to be a self-satire of the espionage genre? Perhaps, but it’s not rollicking enough to really connect on that level. It does have the advantage of brevity (it tops out at just over 90 minutes), but will most work for more serious-minded and adult film fans interested in the work and filmographies of Soderbergh, Koepp, Fassbender and Blanchett. Those seeking more rakish and jaunty, surface-level pleasures may find themselves more apt to shrug.

Released to home video in a standard slipcase with a complementary cardboard slipcover, Black Bag is presented in 2.39: 1 widescreen, with a strong color palette and deep, consistent blacks. Audio arrives in an English language Dolby TrueHD 5.1 track and additional Dolby digital 5.1 audio tracks in French and Spanish, all of which do a good job of delivering dialogue-driven action with a nice blend of ambience and background in some of the more technology-driven sequences.

Supplemental features are fairly sparse, all things considered, consisting of a pair of short featurettes, “The Company of Talent” and “Designing Black Bag,” that address the making of the movie in the most cursory fashion. There are also three deleted scenes running around six minutes, but without commentary from Soderbergh and more active and insightful participation from the movie’s stars, this home video release rates as more of a rental than a must-have.