'Black Bag' briefing

3 ½ (out of 4)

            After a soft return to theatrical experiences when he slipped back into director mode for the third Magic Mike (for XXL he was only executive producer, cinematographer and editor, lazybones), 2023’s Last Dance, Steven Soderbergh delivers one of his famous one-two punches in January’s Presence (paranormal in POV) and now Black Bag all of two months later. The twofer’s were never quite as exacting and elegant as a pair of distinctly different Best Picture nominees in 2000 with the masterful mosaic drug drama Traffic and the schmaltzy grassroots Julia Roberts show in Erin Brockovich. However 2025 finds the profoundly prolific director still dipping between his respective hipster selves, the fidgeting experimental guru and the less pretentious, pop-aspiring traditionalist.

Though he would drop any distinct auteur trademarks as a writer after the 90s, the comprehensive realignment to editing and cinematography (usually under pseudonyms like Peter Andrews and Mary Ann Bernard) meant he would become even more Spielbergian, a guy with command of craft (Soder sometimes loves imitating Kaminski’s haloed light sources) but not the pen. Anyway, here we are after a series of collabs in scripting from Scott Z Burns (The Informant!, Contagion, Side Effects) to Lem Dobbs (Kafka, The Limey, Haywire) and plenty in between but David Koepp (director/screenwriter known for penning stuff for Spielberg, De Palma, Fincher, Howard) has got to be the most royal of the frequent linkups so far. I’m ready to give Black Bag some due praise but it’s worth noting that before he penned Steven’s most recent two, he wrote the wicked thrills of Soderbergh’s straight to streaming affair Kimi, a film with which the fears of the technological spear of time are backdrop for the reliable satiation of conspiracy, surveillance and subdued spy stuff…

Black Bag is like most Soderbergh pieces — it’s efficient, cleanly (if hazily) shot, edited, backdropped (by stellar Ocean’s scorer David Holmes, though the synth-savant Cliff Martinez is his usual suit), acted with class by players of pedigree new and old, and can be most accurately described as airtight, vacuum-sealed, crisp, calmly rapturous, essentially silk-fucking-smooth. Steven here particularly seems to have returned to the digital Fincher yellows of his 2010s renaissance, which saw sequential stretches of quality as assured as Haywire into Magic Mike into Behind the Candelabra into Side Effects, all in about two years. He’s a man who likes it lean and minimalist — Soderbergh can’t wait to start the dialogue before you see the conversation start, his art or his fancies subsisting on sustained low stakes despite his own scrupulousness, like he’s aiming for timelessness by composing pictures so breezy and at times convoluted (like The Informant!, No Sudden Move, OCEAN’S TWELVE) that the lasting power in the case of Black Bag will be more for the games of deception, Fassbender’s front and center fastidiousness and the film’s brave, winningly resistant urge for twists on twists in favor of a delightful nod to monogamy over the duplicitousness of a typical femme fatale, Allied-esque setup.

The man is an unstoppable machine of chic, clinically modern stylization and well-curated sorta coffee table cinema that tells you to relax and let him do all the work. With spies some might expect Black Bag to fit closer to the art-action feel of Haywire, probably this movie’s closest companion given the related Fassbender role, as well as The Good German for Cate Blanchette and more noir nonsense to paint this whodunnit (her only other sus-seductress turn is Guillermo’s Nightmare Alley). But as mainstream media its a modest movie, another keyword for Soder — like many features outside of his hiatuses and threatened retirements and streaming deals, Black Bag could’ve premiered online and it wouldn’t be worth any less. Kimi alone was enough to say for once that a movie doesn’t need a theatrical release (NOT EVEN A FESTIVAL DEBUT MY WORD is this even a MOTION PICTURE?!) to be considered, well, considerable, boy that’s hard to type — but in the end filmmakers matter much more than the format, and Steven’s workmanlike dexterity continues to be all but untouchable in his corner of Gen X determination and detachment.