Black Bag
Director: Steven Soderbergh
Writer: David Koepp
Cast: Michael Fassbender, Cate Blanchett, Gustaf Skarsgård, Tom Burke, Marisa Abela, Regé-Jean Page, Naomie Harris, Pierce Brosnan
Seen on: 16.5.2025

Plot:
George (Michael Fassbender) and Kathryn (Cate Blanchett) are the dream couple in British Intelligence, keeping their private and professional lives strictly separate. But when George is tipped off that important information has been compromised and that it looks like Kathryn might be the one to blame. George needs to quickly figure out her loyalties, as well as those of their colleagues – and his own.

Let’s watch Black Bag, I thought. It has Michael Fassbender and Cate Blanchett, what could possibly go wrong, I thought. Hold my beer, Steven Soderbergh said, and I will show you.

I watched the trailer for this film and I was wondering already whether I would actually want to see it. It just looked so vacuous and boring. And, contrary to a lot of trailers out there, I have to admit that it was a fantastic trailer in the sense of giving a completely accurate impression of the film that is just as empty and boring as I feared it would be from the trailer.

The film has just zero interesting things to say. And even worse, it has zero chemistry. In a film that stars Michael Fassbender and Cate fucking Blanchett as the most devoted couple in the world, a lack of chemistry is simply a crime. And it leads to the worst final kiss I have ever seen. It literally looked like mashing a Ken and a Barbie together, with about the same amount of passion as an 8 year-old can muster, having no idea what sexuality actually is.

The problem is that the film removed pretty much anything that could hold our interests. Relying almost exclusively on beige and brown, it even managed to make CATE FUCKING BLANCHETT look colorless. The only character allowed to show any emotion at all was Clarissa (Marisa Abela) and she felt like she was from another planet in the film. And to top it all off, everybody is mumbling, especially in the beginning of the film, making it hard to understand what anybody is saying.

Nevertheless, there were two things that didn’t leave me entirely cold. Firstly, therapist Zoe (Naomie Harris) was such a professional ethics disaster, it made my blood boil and consider calling the cops on a fictional character. I would have liked a less Hollywood version of a therapist indeed. Secondly, the beginning of the film where we are introduced to George and Kathryn as a couple is a beautiful montage of little relationship moments that are expertly used to give us a very clear sense who each of them is and who they are as a couple. But one beautiful montage doesn’t make a film, and other than that, it was a boring mess.

Summarizing: feels like an experiment of how boring one can make a film.