Director: Steven Soderbergh 
Starring: Cate Blanchett, Michael Fassbender, Marisa Abela, Tom Burke, Naomie Harris, Regé-Jean Page, Pierce Brosnan
Certificate: 15
Run Time: 94 mins

Black Bag is a stripped-down espionage thriller by Steven Soderbergh, his second film of the year after the excellent Presence. Michael Fassbender plays British Intelligence officer George Woodhouse and as the film opens, he is given one week by his superior to investigate who has leaked a top-secret software program. One of the suspects is his fellow intelligence officer and wife, Kathryn (Cate Blanchett). He invites the other four suspects to dinner and drugs the chana masala (which he tells his wife to avoid) to get them to loosen up and in his words “watch the ripples”. 

This is another excellent film from Soderbergh and it’s impressive how lean Black Bag is – there isn’t an ounce of fat in this fast-paced 94 minute thriller. David Koepp’s flirtatious script is very sharply written and the film feels very much indebted to the works of John le Carré, albeit with Soderbergh’s influence. It’s very satisfying constantly seeing this ensemble play each other wih the film’s dry wit and there’s a surprising number of laughs here too, especially a serious Fassbender cooking up a storm in the kitchen with steamed-up glasses. The film’s lusciously shot by Soderbergh (under his usual Peter Andrews pseudonym) and David Holmes’ playful score is very fitting. 

The performances are uniformly excellent. Fassbender’s played a similarly meticulous character before in The Killer but he’s oozing with swagger in this and Cate Blanchett makes for a great foil and we’re never sure whether she can be trusted or not. Marisa Abela is another standout as a satellite imagery specialist and Pierce Brosnan’s surprisingly great as the big boss, even if he’s not in the film very much. 

Black Bag is a hugely enjoyable spy thriller and a thrilling genre exercise from Soderbergh in how stripped back it is. There’s a medley of excellent performances and some very satisfying set-pieces, with Koepp’s script proving globe-trotting action isn’t the key ingredient to a spy caper. I can’t wait to see how it holds up to a rewatch – this is a deliciously entertaining film.