{"id":11470,"date":"2025-03-15T19:45:59","date_gmt":"2025-03-15T23:45:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=11470"},"modified":"2025-04-23T00:49:28","modified_gmt":"2025-04-23T04:49:28","slug":"black-bag","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2025\/03\/15\/black-bag\/","title":{"rendered":"Black Bag"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Black Bag<\/strong> (2025)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Focus\/Drama-Thriller\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 93 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (language including some sexual references, some violence)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Steven Soderbergh\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: David Koepp\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: David Holmes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Steven Soderbergh (as \u201cPeter Andrews\u201d)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: March 14, 2025 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Cate Blanchett, Michael Fassbender, Marisa Abela, Tom Burke, Naomie Harris, Rege-Jean Page, Pierce Brosnan, Gustaf Skarsgard, Kae Alexander.<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: ***<\/p>\n

\u00a0Earlier this year, director Steven Soderbergh and writer David Koepp told audiences a terrifying ghost story in the form of a dysfunctional family drama with Presence which, as I predicted, did not win over mainstream audiences. I doubt they\u2019ll do much better with Black Bag<\/strong>, a spy thriller starring Michael Fassbender (The Killer) and Cate Blanchett (Blue Jasmine) as married spies NOT at all like Mr. and Mrs. Smith. Their spy business is serious business. Slow and talky, Black Bag<\/strong> will definitely not appeal to viewers looking for something like Jason Bourne.<\/p>\n

\u00a0George (Fassbender), who works for an unspecified British intelligence agency, is tasked with finding the traitor who stole a top-secret software program called Severus (aka The MacGuffin). He\u2019s given a list with the names of five suspects on it. One of them is his wife and fellow agent Kathryn (Blanchett). The others are Freddie (Burke, Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga), a young hotshot agent recently passed over for promotion and maybe a little resentful; Clarissa (Abela, Back to Black), a mentally unstable satellite surveillance expert and Freddie\u2019s girlfriend; James (Page, Bridgerton), the cocky agent who did get the promotion and his girlfriend, agency psychiatrist Zoe (Harris, Moneypenny from the recent James Bond films).<\/p>\n

\u00a0To divulge any specific plot details about Black Bag<\/strong> would be tantamount to treason. I\u2019ll only say George gets his investigation rolling by inviting all concerned parties to his house for dinner. He then confronts them with their personal secrets in order to rattle them. The only other bit of info I\u2019m willing to reveal is that former James Bond actor Pierce Brosnan plays the agency head. He may or may not be involved with the leak. Okay, that\u2019s it!<\/p>\n

\u00a0I realize how pessimistic I must sound when I say Black Bag<\/strong> won\u2019t find an audience. Allow me to relate an incident that occurred at the Friday afternoon showing I attended. A couple of audience members loudly discussed getting their money back about thirty or so minutes into the movie. I actually had to shush them. I found later from the manager on duty that the woman did indeed ask for a refund…. after the movie was over<\/em>! Of course, her request was denied. The woman was upset because it wasn\u2019t what she expected, a James Bond-like action movie. Uh, this is why we watch trailers, to avoid surprises like this. Black Bag<\/strong> is more John le Carre than Ian Fleming.<\/p>\n

\u00a0That being said, I\u2019ll admit to being put off by the film\u2019s slow pace. At the same time, I knew it was leading up to something. Watching Black Bag<\/strong> takes a lot of patience, but it pays off unlike the recent drama Magazine Dreams. It does go somewhere. And no, it\u2019s not an action-packed affair. Instead, it runs on tension. There\u2019s always something going on. It\u2019s the ultimate spy game, a chess match with George skillfully moving the pieces. It assumes its audience is intelligent enough to get it.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The acting in Black Bag<\/strong> is very good. Fassbender and Blanchett work extremely well off of each other. Both of them being part of the intelligence community puts them on a level playing field. They know the tricks of the trade and are prepared to countermove each other\u2019s every move. It\u2019s interesting seeing how they sustain a marriage while working in a profession built on secrecy. Fassbender, playing it calm and cool to an almost eerie degree, keeps the viewer on edge with the steady way he approaches his work. There isn\u2019t much that escapes his gaze. He\u2019s always a few moves ahead of his opponent. Blanchett matches her co-star move for move. She\u2019s a little more sly and playful in her approach to her work. I\u2019d hate to go up against either of them in a poker game.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The supporting cast is equally adept in their roles. They\u2019re all smart, but none of them are any match for George and Kathryn. The standout for me is Abela as the mentally unstable Clarissa. She didn\u2019t do a terrible job as the late singer Amy Winehouse in last summer\u2019s biopic Back to Black, a movie I liked better on a second viewing. She reacts to a revelation about her lover with a shocking sudden act of violence and does so calmly. It\u2019s freaky.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Soderbergh is a skilled filmmaker in spite of s*** shows like the Magic Mike movies. He\u2019s also an amazing cinematographer (as \u201cPeter Andrews\u201d) and editor (as \u201cMary Ann Bernard\u201d). He\u2019s always on point with his visuals. He employs soft-focus and wide-angle lenses to amp up the feeling of danger. His editing is tight and taut without ever becoming a jumbled visual mess. It\u2019s minimalism at its best. As always, he works in perfect conjunction with Koepp\u2019s smart and tight script. The pacing is too slow for some, but others will appreciate what Soderbergh is going for with Black Bag<\/strong>.\"\"<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Black Bag (2025)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Focus\/Drama-Thriller\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 93 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (language including some sexual references, some violence)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Steven Soderbergh\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: David Koepp\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: David Holmes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Steven Soderbergh (as \u201cPeter Andrews\u201d)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: March 14, 2025 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Cate Blanchett, Michael Fassbender, Marisa Abela, Tom Burke, Naomie Harris, Rege-Jean Page, Pierce Brosnan, Gustaf Skarsgard, Kae […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":11477,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11470","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-suspense-thrillers"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/Black-Bag-PIC.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11470","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11470"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11470\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11770,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11470\/revisions\/11770"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11477"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11470"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11470"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11470"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}