Fig leaf: Steven Soderbergh’s Black Bag

Steven Soderbergh’s “BlackBag” (2025) is too clever by two-and-a-half, to the point of aggressively wised-up. The protagonist [we think] George Woodhouse (Michael Fassbender) and wife Kathryn St. Jean (Cate Blanchett) are senior British intelligence civil servants whose marriage is as much a cipher as the work they do. 

“Black bag” is a term of art the film uses for information that must not be disclosed to those not cleared to a particular level of secure access. In a world that compartmentalizes secret information to reduce risk of disclosure, only those cleared for access to specific compartments are privileged to share that information. In this instance husband and wife, although senior functionaries for the same outfit, have different jobs with different access, allowing wife the laissez-passer to zip in and out of dark areas under the single laconic cover “black bag”. 

The issue is that a British intelligence insider has sold to a maverick Russian general a flash drive storing a ridiculously-sophisticated CIA-contrived software virus which, locally installed, will cause a nuclear power reactor to meltdown. Woodhouse, warned at outset of the breach, must find the rogue among an assortment of colleagues and recover or destroy the flash drive. 

Writer David Koepp’s set-piece follows old-fashioned class-forward British whodunits, though here detective-steered dinners stand in for drawing room ensembles, perhaps because Brits learned to cook in the intervening years. 

St. Jean is on a suspects shortlist which includes colleagues of various race and circumstance (Marisa Abela, Tom Burke, Naomie Harris, and Regé-Jean Page, with Pierce Brosnan as agency head) who provide the character blemishes, substance issues, and sexual peccadillos which attach to intelligence professionals in modern tales of intrigue if these are not simply occupational hazards. 

That said, the measure here is cool. Where in The Old Days certain characters were marked by class distinctions which placed them above other characters and general audiences, the distinguishing marker here is the extent to which they are wised-up. In the spirit of our times, selves are served before King and Country. And it is the coolest cucumber in the icebox who makes tzatziki of the least cool. 

Black Bag 2025 U.S. (93 minutes) Focus Features. Directed by Steven Soderbergh; screenplay by David Koepp; cinematography by Soderbergh (as Peter Andrews); editing by Soderbergh; production design by Philip Messina; casting by Carmen Cuba; music by David Holmes; produced by Casey Silver and Greg Jacobs.