Michael Fassbender as secret agent George in Black Bag [Claudette Barius/Focus Features © 2025]

BLACK BAG
Directed by Steven Soderbergh
Certificate: 12a
☆☆☆

IN this spy-based whodunnit, director Steven Soderbergh has set up a swanky world of suave spooks, all professionally trained liars with motives to never, ever play it straight.

Husband and wife spy team George and Kathryn (Michael Fassbender and Cate Blanchett) are charged individually with uncovering a mole who is selling a piece of IT to the Russians – and have to question their loyalties to the firm with their loyalties to one another.

Likeability. Relatability. Curiosity. The average film-goer needs to find a reason to engage with the characters whose fictional lives we are offered a grandstand view of.

And therein lies the rub in Black Bag, a 90-minute burst of a movie that whizzes past you and leaves not a scratch. It’s made up of a motley collection of characters that offer no discernible reason for us to engage with them. We learn that Black Bag is the phrase well-dressed spies use to describe stuff they do that they can’t tell their nearest and dearest.

George is a secret agent, who is told that one of five colleagues has been slipping secrets to Russians. It’s his job to find out who. On the list is his wife Kathryn, who is also a spy. We are catapulted into his attempts to wriggle his way through bluffs, binds and BS to catch the mole among a five-strong list of possibles. Heavy conversations littered with spy-speak create a confusing narrative of maybe it’s him, maybe it’s her options.

Maybe it’s just the way spies conduct themselves today is dull: it’s always about codes and computer viruses and CCTV and satellites. Clint Eastwood shinning up a heavily defended moun­tain lair via the outside of a cable car with a stick of dynamite between his teeth? Not these days.

Black Bag parades its satire in front of it, trying to remind us in every scene that spy films can be a bit silly, and is at its best when it doesn’t go for the serious explanations. George invites the suspects round for a posh dinner after liberally lacing the chana masala with a truth drug and the set-up and pay-off is super.

Fassbender and Blanchett have little to do, but the supporting cast of tech spook James (Regé-Jean Page), gumshoe middle-aged worn-down Freddie (Tom Burke), IT operator Clarissa (Marisa Abela) or spy squad shrink Zoe (Naomie Harris) make up for it with whacky back stories.

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