Black Bag

Putting the “cool” into a big screen offering – and actually having it turn out to be cool – is often easier said than done. Attempts at accomplishing this feat in many instances turn out to be hokey, trite or mishandled, so it’s gratifying to see a filmmaker pull it off successfully. Such is the case in the latest work from director Steven Soderbergh and screenwriter David Koepp, an expertly structured, superbly executed spy thriller masterfully laced with suspense, wit, charm, class and a dash of deftly placed camp. This savvy, top-shelf story follows a group of high-ranking British intelligence officers caught up in a web of international intrigue in which carefully calculated financial, political, military and technological misdirections are at work at seemingly every turn. On top of that, this cadre of colleagues is made up of diverse individuals who are allegedly good friends and/or romantic partners, though such loyalties and confidences become expendable and are conveniently swept under the rug as “black bag” considerations when they get in the way of agency operations (or, in some cases, personal agendas). To complicate matters further, it’s not always clear which puppet masters are purportedly pulling their respective strings (or why), leading to a constant shuffling of the deck of priorities and the overall clarity of their missions. And, in making all of this clandestine subterfuge work, there’s the aforementioned cool factor that causes everything to seem so inherently logical, plausible, and, above all, entertaining. Think of this as a modern-day version of “The Ipcress File” (1965) (which is said to have inspired this release), combined with elements of “An Acceptable Loss” (2018), and you’ve got a good idea of what this one is all about. Of course, none of this would have been possible without the film’s generally crisp, on-point script and the fine performances turned in by its excellent ensemble, including Cate Blanchett, Naomie Harris, Pierce Brosnan, Regé-Jean Page, Tom Burke, Marisa Abela and Michael Fassbender (in a surprisingly effective role for once, a nuanced, understated portrayal in which he’s not constantly mugging for the camera, enabling him to come across like a latter-day young Michael Caine). This production’s creators have skillfully packed a lot of punch into the picture’s economic 1:33:00 runtime, so there’s virtually no wasted footage or extraneous material bogging down the narrative of this tale, which becomes ever-more compelling the further it plays out (though, admittedly, some of the dialogue early on in the film feels a tad cryptic and overwritten, a quality that, thankfully, dissipates quickly). “Black Bag” is another genuinely fine 2025 release, lending more credence to the hope that this could well end up being a better year for movies than its woeful predecessor (not to mention a significant step up for the creative duo of Soderbergh and Koepp compared to their most recent undercooked collaboration, “Presence,” which was released earlier this year). It’s indeed cool to be cool, and this film shows us how that’s done, a fine example that many a filmmaker could learn a lot from.