Black Bag (2025) Tinker Tailor Soderbergh Spy Drama
“There is a stranger in our house”
It’s a Friday night in London and via a continuous shot with no perceptible edits we follow a currently unnamed man through the yellow hued streets and alleyways of England’s capital city before he arrives at the entrance to a bar and the first words of the movie: “I’m here to see Mr Meacham”. Still in one flowing movement and continuous shot we continue to follow behind this largely unseen man as he descends the stairs into a brightly lit bar area, the glare of the spotlights piercing a busy bar as we now descend yet more stairs and into a basement nightclub as he turns left before stopping at the DJ booth. His presence attracts the attention of a bald man enjoying the company of two much younger ladies either side of him as he raises himself to his feet and without a word exchanged between the men, the man we’ve followed into this lively den of iniquity now follows in the footsteps of the bald man, ascending another set of stairs and back out into the dirty yellow framed streets of London.
With a first and distinct change of camera angle, director Steven Soderbergh now captures each man individually as first “Meacham” (Gustaf Skarsgård) turns to face the man we’ve followed, namely “George” (Michael Fassbender) with a portentous first statement and “You were right George. We have a traitor in the house”. Director Soderbergh now spins and circles his camera around the bespectacled figure of George for the first time as Meacham passes him a piece of paper with five names and “Your wife’s one of them”. As Meacham confirms that all five names have the necessary security clearance, means and motive for being the in-house rat who has leaked a top level software code named “Severus” which “if deployed as intended, several thousand people will die”, George, in his laconic and unrushed style, adjusts the timescale needed for his investigation from two weeks to just one before refusing to answer Meacham’s question regarding the guilt of his wife and if she is the leak, whether or not he will be able to assassinate her. Instead, he asks after Meacham’s wife and his marriage to which he similarly refuses to answer, directly at least, and rather revels in his role as a spy as he admits “I wish it wasn’t this fucking easy. To cheat” before applauding George’s ability and restraint to remain monogamous in their free spirited world.
Walking away from George, Meacham leaves him with a parting verbal shot of “Good luck finding the rat” before director Soderbergh cuts to a longer shot of George over the shoulder of a largely otherwise unseen man as he walks away from the bar in the dirty yellow of a London night and we fade to black before “BLACK BAG” is displayed in a white font on a black background in the centre of the screen.
As “Sunday” is scribbled in a white font on the screen, this is accompanied by the first stirrings of David Holmes’ magnificent musical score which is so often dominated by a double bass (or a very heavy bass sound) amongst a jaunty jangle of other instruments which really catches the ear as well as putting you, deliberately, at a slight unease. This is magnified as we dissolve from the outside of an expensive and opulent looking London terraced town house to the large and spotlessly clean kitchen inside and a stew bubbling gently away as George meticulously chops garlic and then lemons before the music intensifies as he climbs the stairs before standing in the doorway to a bedroom he shares with his wife “Kathryn” (Cate Blanchett) and wordlessly admiring her as she dresses for the evening. “I can feel when you’re watching me” she teases George who immediately apologises before talk turns to the “unusual” evening ahead and a meal for a “data scraper, two agents, and the in-house shrink” as George searches for the “rat” who has leaked Severus. Now walking into her dressing room adjoining the bedroom, Kathryn announces “It’s been a while since we had a traitor to dinner” as George cautions her that as the lead investigator, they really shouldn’t be discussing this top level matter at hand, even as a married couple, before Kathryn asks what’s on the menu. “Fun and Games” he replies laconically and without the merest hint of a smile, which continues as he warns his wife to avoid the masala dish as he’s prepared and laced it with the drug DZN5. “Oh darling” responds Kathryn, “You must not dose our guests” and without a hint of a smile once more, George replies “One of them is a liar. I want to know which”.
We cut to “Freddie” (Tom Burke) striding purposely toward a London pub, bottle of wine in hand ahead of the evening meal, and after locating the table containing his three compadres pays the bill for the table, orders himself a quick whiskey and after we’ve been very briefly introduced to the data scraper and youngest member of the foursome “Clarissa” (Marisa Abela), one of the two spying agents in the form of “James” (Regé-Jean Page) and the in-house shrink “Zoe” (Naomie Harris) Freddie arrives in a whirlwind before raising a bittersweet toast to James and his “meteoric rise through the ranks”. No sooner has Freddie sat down and late for the pre-dinner meeting he himself called, he’s now rallying the troops to eagerly depart and as they do so, reassures a worried Clarissa to simply be herself despite the strange circumstances surrounding this hastily arranged and out of the ordinary meeting away from the office.
The doorbell of George and Kathryn’s home sees Kathryn warmly if still awkwardly greeting their guests as George immediately retreats to the kitchen. As Clarissa, James and Zoe follow Kathryn to the dining room and a dining table resplendent in table lights we cut to Freddie approaching George in the kitchen with an immediate “shall we get this over with” and his clear annoyance, if not surprise, that James was selected ahead of him for a promotion he clearly coveted. “I always hoped it would be you” responds George as the camera cuts to several spots of grease on his white shirt and being the meticulous man that he is, excuses himself from the first of many awkward conversations to come to change his shirt. Freddie is left alone in the kitchen with a bubbling annoyance that their conversation was so brief and concluded without a shred of satisfaction as we quickly cut to the dining table and with everyone incessantly talking, George is simply watching and listening, wordless in fact, until that is, Freddie, a little drunk, raises the history of their dinner party host and the fact he surveilled his own cheating and duplicitous father.
Director Soderbergh now cuts back and forth between a still wordless and seemingly unflappable George and a bitter and slightly drunk Freddie as he lists George’s father’s history and “George torched Daddy’s marriage, and his career, at the same time”. Stoic and unmoveable, George responds simply “I don’t like liars” and remains impervious to the tensions and squabbles rolling around the room before ratcheting up the nervous anxiety and quarrels seeping into every interaction now with:
“I have a game. We go around the table and each of us makes a resolution. The way you might at New Year. Some personal issue that needs to be addressed. I resolve to quit smoking for example. But we don’t make the resolution for ourselves. We make it for the person to our right…”
Thus is the opening 14 minutes of Steven Soderbergh’s Black Bag and a moniker for everything a spy cannot disclose about his or her ongoing activities relating to their clandestine, top secret operations. In a nutshell, everyone is lying to everyone else! Everyone has a black bag. Everyone has a secret they cannot or will not discuss (except to Zoe in her professional capacity as the in-house psychologist) and, as Clarissa rightly points out midway through the film, “everyone is fucking everyone else”. Both metaphorically and, as you’ll discover for yourself, quite literally too. So the film drips in sexual tension and bitter recriminations as well as the lies that cover for other lies and the final week (Friday to the following Monday) of someone’s life. But is it the final days of George and his laconic style of saying so little and yet so much in his oversized glasses reminiscent of another fictional George, Smiley, of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy or Smiley’s People fame? Or the recently promoted James and spurned lover of Zoe? Or the other warring faction in the course of another bittersweet love affair: the overly confident Clarissa or her beau Freddie?
Or is George’s rat far closer to home than he dares admit?
Seven stellar performances (including a stunning cameo from Pierce Brosnan) compliment David Holmes’ wonderful musical score and Steven Soderbergh’s stylish direction in a modern day spy thriller which merges the ancient with the modern in a film I highly recommend to you.
Thanks for reading. I hope this message in a bottle in The Matrix finds you well, prospering, and the right way up in an upside down world.
Whilst you’re here I may as well brag about the release of my trilogy of recently self-published books. Beautiful covers eh! As the title(s) would suggest, this is my life at the movies or at least from 1980 to 2024, and in volume 1 you’ll find 80 spoiler free appraisals of movies from debut filmmakers, 91 of the very best films appraised with love and absent of spoilers from 1990–2024 in volume 2, and in volume 3 you’ll find career “specials” on Paul Thomas Anderson and Quentin Tarantino together with the very best of the rest and another 87 spoiler free film reviews from 2001–2024.
All available in hardback and paperback and here are some handy links:
"A Life at the Movies Vol.1" - link to Amazon
"A Life at the Movies Vol.2" - link to Amazon
"A Life at the Movies Vol.3" - link to Amazon