In the glittering labyrinth of modern espionage thrillers, Black Bag stands poised with all the accoutrements—name-brand talent, glossy international backdrops, a moral quandary or two shimmering on the surface—yet somewhere between the Bondian promise and Soderbergh’s cooler-than-cool execution, the pulse goes slack. This should have been a decadent spread, lush with betrayal and sleight-of-hand. Instead, we’re handed a chilly amuse-bouche, the cinematic equivalent of chewing an ice cube and wishing for cognac.
Soderbergh, who seems to collect genres the way other men collect cufflinks, brings David Koepp’s script to the table and ushers in an A-list trio—Cate Blanchett, Michael Fassbender, and Pierce Brosnan—who look so good flitting through sterile MI6 conference rooms and monochrome flats that you want to press pause and order wallpaper to match. Blanchett, all feline wariness and ice-bright cheekbones, and Fassbender, the man as automat, inhabit George and Kathryn Woodhouse, whose marriage is battered by the suspicion of treason. Isn’t it proud, this set-up? Marriage as double-blind, love as a guessing game where you never see the cards—not even your own.
But what’s meant to be a provocative scrutiny of loyalty—both conjugal and constitutional—quickly grows as pallid as refrigerated chicken. You’d never believe so much could be made so little. Fassbender’s George, meant to be a man tormented by doubt, moves through the film with the stiffness of someone caught in a bad suit at a wedding he regrets attending; Blanchett simmers, but there’s precious little for her to burn. Even the supporting players—Marisa Abela and Tom Burke in particular—work mightily to rise above the script’s leaden expectations, bringing color where Soderbergh settles for shadow.
There is a dinner party sequence, the kind that should fizz with undercurrents of threat and double meaning. Here, George doses the lot in the hope that cocktails might encourage confessions—a trick, I imagine, for people who’ve never seen an Agatha Christie adaptation. Instead, the revelations are bloodless: a whiff of infidelity, a dash of resentment, but nothing that pulses or drags you to the edge of your seat. The scene’s all promise, no payoff, and Soderbergh—usually so attuned to the mechanics of tension and release—lets the moment prattle on, as if hoping one of the actors might improvise a movie within the movie.
If Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is the fine scotch and weathered wood of espionage cinema, Black Bag is a cocktail party where the hors d’oeuvres run out at the first hint of appetite. The film appears to want gravitas, to meditate on trust and betrayal, but every time it reaches for depth, it finds only its own reflection in the high-gloss surfaces. You sense it yearning to be adult and sly, but it mistakes reticence for substance—dialogue that flirts with intrigue but ultimately skirts around it, afraid to touch so much as a moral nerve.
Oh, but it all looks so achingly elegant. Soderbergh’s camera glides along corridors you wish you could lease for weekend getaways, the color palette restricted to the icy tones of the hyper modern rich. You can almost smell the dry-cleaned silk and immaculately pressed dossiers. But like a Tom Ford commercial unwisely stretched to feature length, substance is sacrificed on the altar of style—and not even the haunting monochromes can distract from the lifelessness seeping up through the cracks. The characters are crisp as mannequins, and the polygraphs and blackmail are undercooked, all bark and no bite.
Perhaps the fatal sin is the film’s speed. In a genre where ambiguity should simmer, we’re done in ninety minutes—little more than a brisk jog through betrayal, cleared from the screen almost before the scent of conspiracy reaches the nose. There’s talk of marital secrets and international leaks, but the emotional temperature never rises above the ambient chill of the sets. The stakes—both romantic and political—are pressed flat, so that even the last twist inspires more of a shrug than a gasp.
The effect is less Soderbergh at his effervescent best and more Soderbergh on autopilot, signifying cool without ever breaking a sweat. The leads, those master class actors, are left swinging listlessly on the line, able to conjure only a hint of the electricity a script with pulse might allow. Sex appeal is substituted for actual intimacy; the script presses its face against the glass but never dares to come inside.
In the end, Black Bag is proof that you can gather your movie stars and stroke all the genre surfaces, yet it won’t count for much if you’ve left the guts back in the first draft. The film wants to waltz with moral ambiguity and the messy, beating hearts of spycraft, but winds up pacing the dance floor alone—beautifully dressed, teeth gritted, with all the urgency of a brunch menu at an airport lounge.
You leave Black Bag not satiated but peckish—for something meaner, richer, less constipated by its own sense of sophistication. For all its promises of darkness and duplicity, it’s ultimately a modest salad masquerading as a feast—crisp, yes, but the hunger lingers. In this game of shadows, it never quite found a soul to redeem.
