Of the many things that filmmaker Steven Soderbergh (Ocean’s Eleven trilogy; Logan Lucky; Presence) can be described as, an actor’s director is among them. He knows what he wants regarding a shot, he knows how he wants the production design to look, indicative of a precise mind, but he encourages play and spontaneity which empowers the actors to take control of their performances. Some of this is touched on in the Black Bag featurette “The Company of Talent,” in which Pierce Brosnan (The World’s End; Mars Attacks!) and Naomie Harris (Skyfall; Moonlight) discuss Soderbergh’s creative process which appears to consume most of the hours in a day yet never ceases to dim the director’s collaborative spirit. Considering that Black Bag is a character-driven spy thriller, eschewing action sequences and gadgets for mind games, the success and failure of the film comes down to the performances and there are several remarkable ones, each one pulling the audience deeper into the intrigue until the only way out is through. Now, after a theatrical release in March 2025 and a digital release in April, curious audiences can bring Black Bag home with two brief bonus features.
L-R: Cate Blanchett as Kathryn St. Jean and Michael Fassbender as George Woodhouse in director Steven Soderbergh’s BLACK BAG, a Focus Features release. Photo Credit: Claudette Barius/Focus Features. © 2025 All Rights Reserved.
Some couples say that they would kill for each other, but, for married couple George and Kathyrn (Michael Fassbender and Cate Blanchett, respectively), these two exceptional spies mean it. This gets put to the test when George is tasked with investigating five individuals who may be connected with the theft of a dangerous project known as Severus and the last name on the list is Kathryn’s.
Though what follows is a home release review, half the fun of Black Bag is the mystery and watching it unfold the first time, so spoilers will be avoided as much as possible.
Openings always set a tone and Black Bag is no exception, though, what’s most intriguing is the different messages Soderbergh sends and their deceptive coherence. Across the opening titles and into the mysterious introduction to a nameless, faceless male we come to know is George, Soderbergh incorporates a score from frequent collaborator composer David Holmes (Ocean’s trilogy; Out of Sight; No Sudden Move) that contains notes of prior confidence projects Ocean’s Eleven (2001) and its two sequels. These notes infuse a playfulness rather than intensity into the setup, a sense that, whatever intrigue occurs before us, it’s all fun and games. The whole score isn’t like this, with Holmes utilizing a more traditional instrumentation to denote suspicion or increased tension, but the use in the opening conveys a certain levity that the film must then adhere to (and it does). In concert, Soderbergh places a camera directly behind the figure as it moves through the streets and then into a business in an unknown city (later identified as London), each step made with confidence, conveying purpose and precision. This man, whoever they are, knows exactly what they are doing, movements and words unwasted, even upon finding his contact and being handed a mission. These seem like two disparate notions — the playful sounds against a serious physical performance — but it all comes together as the contact gives the man his mission and all the details from it tell us that what follows is going to be a cat-and-mouse game between a skilled truth-seeker, several spies, and his own legendary spy wife. This will be an abnormal mission filled with colleagues, trusted confidants, and the one person the man vowed to love ‘til death do they part; nothing about what follows will be either devoid of humor or so light that the stakes will remain low. It’s a tightrope act that Soderbergh maintains through to the end, delivering the same kind of smart twists and surprises that made other confidence tales in his catalog so memorable.
Much like the Ocean’s films, and to a different degree Out of Sight (1998) and Logan Lucky (2017), the style of Black Bag is imperative to the narrative. This plays out in the costuming, production design, and cinematography to create a cohesive and lived-in world. In the featurette, “Designing Black Bag,” Fassbender states that the costume is the last piece to the character, which is similar to what many think of a costume as it applies to what an audience member responds to. The costume is as much an extension of the character as any other part of the performance because of how the audience reacts to it and how the actor uses it. George, a character we quickly learn is detail-oriented, doesn’t physically respond when his glasses fog as he stands over a complex meal he’s cooking, yet he must immediately change clothes when liquid splashes onto his shirt cuff — the fog will clear leaving his glasses as immaculate as before, but the stain might set and ruin his shirt, and that will not do as it might derail his evening plan. The audience gets from this that George’s appearance is as measured and specific as all other elements in his life, helping to establish a modus operandi that makes him formidable, but may also create an opportunity for weakness, one which a traitor (such as the one which he hunts) might exploit.
L-R: Michael Fassbender as George Woodhouse, Tom Burke as Freddie Smalls, and Pierce Brosnan as Arthur Steiglitz in director Steven Soderbergh’s BLACK BAG, a Focus Features release. Photo Credit: Claudette Barius/Focus Features. © 2025 All Rights Reserved.
Then there’s the production design whose mixture of on-set and on-location work is blended seamlessly to capture the anesthetic appearance of government operations within London, as well as George and Kathryn’s conversely opulent home. In the former, explained in “Designing Black Bag” as being set within an East London location, all of the offices and structures used for conferences, wide shots of office drones at work, and other sequences were built within this on-location structure specifically so as to ensure that audiences felt like the narrative was occurring within London (anchored there by being able to see through the excess windows), grounding everything that occurs in a reality. For the latter, the same featurette offers a small glimpse of the set utilized to make-up George and Kathryn’s interior home and exterior (including the street). A set that includes three floors and a variety of usable spaces, each one not only designed to serve the narrative but to convey something about George and Kathryn, specifically that their is George’s domain given its specificity in design and organization. The staging of any sequence within their home, for example, show that the home is George’s turf, which is typically a power position. Soderbergh leans into how that power consideration changes once one begins to consider Kathryn might be a double-agent and George’s perceived power is reduced significantly (a fun element in the game at play). One scene that demonstrates this wonderfully with blocking is when Kathryn is coming downstairs, crossing from the top-right of the screen, across, and to the bottom-left, and then enters the kitchen where George is. This is a simple shot and its contains multiple purposes, the first of which is that it makes the act of leaving for work (Kathryn) dynamic compared to George’s stillness. The second is that the staging of the scene composition perpetuates the notion that George, bathed in natural light from the excess windows in the portion of the house he’s in, implies an openness or lack of secrets whereas Kathryn, by entering from a shaded location of the home, is attempting to avoid detection. Up to this point, we understand that George detests liars and is well-regarded in this business as someone who is relentless in pursuit of truth and these simple choices establish the possible opposition occurring under his roof.
L-R: Actor Michael Fassbender and director Steven Soderbergh on the set of BLACK BAG, a Focus Features release. Photo Credit: Claudette Barius/Focus Features. © 2025 All Rights Reserved.
Bringing it all together is the cinematography from Soderbergh (No Sudden Moves; Haywire) which offers a 1970s sensibility to the entire picture, despite the obvious rooting in modernity. Of course, some of this is encouraged by the costuming which has the entire cast looking London chic, a very different feel from, say, the modern Christopher McQuarrie Mission: Impossible films wherein our highly-trained spies are less likely to be smartly-dressed unless it’s mission-required as they work to blend in where possible and with cinematography to match (no longer seeking to evoke a time period (Mission: Impossible’s cold war era) or genre (Mission: Impossible 2’s Hong Kong action), but latched onto modernity). However, what pushes it over is the frequent haze surrounding any shown lights in the frame, as well as the use of general whites. This inclusion gives the film a soft look throughout, with the exception of few sequences, that makes one think of similar confidence tales like Norman Jewison’s The Thomas Crowne Affair (1968) or Michael Mann’s Heat (1981), giving audience the sense of peeking behind something secret and elite. Even when the haze gets a little distracting from the action on screen, it’s still an attempt to give each frame personality. This, of course, also makes the few scenes in which George goes fishing all the more important because, this place of tranquility is a where he goes to think and so, as is appropriate, there is no haze here, only crystal-clear imagery denoting George’s own fog having lifted.
Throughout this home review, various elements relating to the two special features have been mentioned. There is plenty more to be learned and appreciated despite the brief 16-minute runtime across the two. It does leave home viewers wanting more, of course, but we learn enough to at least walk away feeling like we learned something specific to this project and a taste of what may go on during other Soderbergh productions. The only element not yet mentioned are the deleted scenes. There are three brief ones and, frankly, it makes sense that they hit the cutting room floor. One of them introduces an extra narrative thread for Kathryn that overcomplicates the already intricate character story and another, while interesting for George and Tom Burke’s Freddie Smalls, enables the narrative to show its hand too early. One of the best things about Black Bag is how it maintains its intrigue throughout and this scene demolishes it by laying things out.
Powered by a hypnotic Fassbender (Haywire; Kung Fury: The Movie) performance supported by Blanchett (Ocean’s 8; Nightmare Alley), Burke (Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga), Harris, Brosnan, Marisa Abela (Barbie), and Regé-Jean Page (Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves), Black Bag is the kind of spy thriller audiences have been looking for. Considering how quickly it entered and exited theaters, it’s fair that many may not have checked this out or felt it was too cerebral for general audiences. Truth is, this film gets grimy in a good way, wrapping its plot around highly-trained professionals who are just as human as anyone, making them prone to mistakes. Yes, there may be international stakes baked in, but that’s not why you’ll want to watch (and rewatch) Black Bag. You’ll want to watch for the way each of the actors just lets go and leaves it all out there, restrained performances at times or not.
So, if you missed out on this one or just want to know a little more about how the mystery was made, this home release is an easy recommendation.
Black Bag Special Features:
- The Company of Talent (10:12)
- Designing Black Bag (5:29)
- Three (3) Deleted Scenes
Available on digital April 1st, 2025.
Available on Peacock May 2nd, 2025.
Available on 4K UHD, Blu-ray, and DVD May 13th, 2025.
For more information, head to the official Focus Features Black Bag webpage.
Final Score: 4.5 out of 5.
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