Black Bag

There's just about enough intrigue in David Koepp's efficient script to hold the attention in trying to decipher what is going on in Steven Soderbergh's underwhelming spy thriller which is more like a theatrical play than a cinematic experience.

All of the assembled cast do a sufficient job in delivering a very talky script. I especially liked Michael Fassbender's concise and measured performance as the spy ordered to get to the bottom of a leaked top secret software program that could jeopardise national security where his wife, Cate Blanchett, is one of the suspects.

For me Soderbergh never quite scratches my itch when he attempts to do 'cool' like he did with the Ocean trilogy. There's a cold aloofness that prevents me as a viewer to get completely wrapped up in the story he is trying to tell. Also with Black Bag I wasn't keen on the cinematography which looked like a creative decision to make most light sources seem diffused, presumably to make this look like an old fashioned espionage thriller from the 1960's. Fassbenders character certainly has shades of Harry Palmer to him, especially wearing those trademark black glasses.

Despite it being talky and smart it's not that taut and I would like to have seen a bit more action and a few surprise twists for there to be a better payoff for all the concentration the viewer has to endure to get to a rather mediocre finale.

My Review- Black Bag My Rating 6/10 In Cinemas now

Mmm, I found this movie directed by Steven Soderbergh really dull and lifeless.

He's not a favourite director of mine although I loved Erin Brockovich but some oh his other offerings left me underwhelmed.

Black Bag begins with intelligence agent Kathryn Woodhouse being suspected of betraying the nation and her husband George also a legendary agent .

The stakes get high when the security around a software program named Severus is threatened by falling into foreign hands.

George played by Michael Fassbender faces the ultimate test of whether to be loyal to his marriage, or his country.

Kathryn Woodhouse is played by Cate Blanchett in what I refer to as one of her " look at me I'm acting! " roles most recent being the complex wife Catherine Ravenscroft a celebrity journalist in the series Disclaimer which I also rated a 6/10.

Black Bag is a slick looking production with an estimated budget of USD 60,000,000 .

For me the script by David Koepp didn't flow and got very convoluted at times with no light or shade to make the characters believable.

Even some of the supporting characters seemed cut outs from previous spy dramas .

It even features two alumni from the official James Bond feature film series. They are Eve Moneypenny actress Naomie Harris and former James Bond actor Pierce Brosnan.

The scene in the restaurant with Pierce Brosnan's character Arthur Stieglitz consuming what appears to be a live fish in an illegal Japanese custom called ikizukuri really turned me off my dinner .

I really even couldn't say I recall any movie score in Black Bag but apparently it was composed by Thomas Newman.

I'm sure some people will probably enjoy Black Bag but it went over my head and straight out of my memory.

I have to confess that I have tried my best to sit through watching it, but I failed...gladly.

I don't know why this movie, with several men and women sitting around a dinner table, kept blabbering to each other, would cost and consume 50 million dollars to make. How much did the producers pay each of these actors to sit down? Maybe they spent a lot of the movie budget just for the black plastic glass frame for the guy, even if it looked so unnecessary and so fake on his face?

I have also found that the dialogue of this movie is just so irrelevant to me. I couldn't even understand what it meant, maybe not just to the participant actors who could ingeniously memorize the wtf? Dialogue, but to a lot of the viewers, including me. I have watched some movies with only two actors sitting facing each other and talking from the very beginning to the end, but I found them so interesting and never lost my focus. But the dialogue of this Black Bag, with more people talking to each other, I didn't even know what they were talking about and couldn't care less.

Black Bag (2025) would be one of the most tedious and meaningless movies that I have watched in the last 50 years.

Cate Blanchett didn't age well and did an abysmal facelift job that almost made her unrecognizable and tough to look at.

This is not your average spy thriller: it's mainly talk, tons of it, between a small group of British intelligence employees who all seem to live their personal and work lives in each others pockets and beds. To attempt to add gravitas to the production, the colour has been desaturated and the light dialled down to dull and grim, so viewers know it's a serious drama, not James Bond.

There are a few effective action set pieces to keep viewers awake ( not my wife, unfortunately, she slept through most of it ) but not really enough, I'm guessing, to satisfy the action fans.

For film fans who try to see everything that opens in cinemas, only.

It was one of those movies that's first hard to get into, but once you hit halfway you're invested. It's not that this movie was bad at all, it just didn't hit for me. It felt like a murder mystery, without the murder. It had fun twists and turns and dark at times. Them sitting around the table was the most intense parts, that goes to show you the amount of action in this movie. Just a warning if you're looking for any at all, this has none. Also most of this movie could have been figured out with a conversation between wife and husband, thay apparently trust each other so much. But whatever. Haha

Watched at AMC on 3-13-2025.