“Black Bag” is an absolute blast.

Less than two months after director Steven Soderbergh and screenwriter Davi Koepp hit multiplexes with the highly entertaining haunted house movie “Presence,” they are back again with a sleek, stylish thriller with a killer cast and razor sharp screenplay.

It’s one of those films where everything is clicking together in unison – a perfect synergy of a great cast with great characters in a film that is directed and presented nearly flawlessly.

In “Black Bag,” Michael Fassbender and Cate Blanchett play George and Kathyrn, a married couple who are also co-workers for a high level English spy agency.

George is a master at finding liars and moles in the company, a talent that leads a fellow agent (Gustaf Skarsgard) to ask him to find a mole who may be working with the Russians to divulge info on a device capable of hacking nuclear facilities.

George is given a list of possible suspects, which includes Kathryn and two couples – one couple a colonel named James (Regé-Jean Page) who is involved with the company’s psychologist Zoe (Naomie Harris) and the other a longtime friend and fellow spy (Tom Burke); and his much younger companion, a cyber specialist named Clarissa (Marisa Abela).

To get to the bottom, George invites everyone over to dinner with no one, including Kathryn, having the knowledge of why they are there.

This set piece serves as the launching point for all of the action with George beginning to question how much he really knows about Kathryn – determined to both expose the culprit, even if it is her, while also trying to prove her innocence.

The relationship dynamic is a wrinkle that Koepp’s script uses to effectively ramp up the tension. Fassbender and Blanchett are both outstanding, a believable couple who may well be betraying each other for what they believe is the greater good of their country.

The dinner is one of several set pieces in “Black Box” that are among the best individual scenes in any film so far in 2025. Soderbergh also stages a sequence involving a lie detector test that is edited so well by the director (credited under an alias) that it’s work I hope is revisited during awards season at the end of the year.

In both set pieces it is not just the two leads, but the entire cast who shine, especially Abela. It’s nice to see her bounce back from last year’s “Back to Black” – the disappointing Amy Winehouse bio pic where Abela shined despite the subpar material.

She nearly steals “Black Box” which is impressive given all the talent at play here.

It all comes together in a tidy little 90 minute package. Soderbergh isn’t wasting anyone’s time here, including the audience, and the result is one of 2025’s first great films. It’s both old school and fresh and new – proving once again that Soderbergh is one of the most consistently entertaining filmmakers working today.

If You Go
“Black Bag”
Starring: Michael Fassbender, Cate Blanchett
Directed by: Steven Soderbergh
Rating: R for language including some sexual references, and some violence
Playing at: Regal Bowling Green Stadium 12
Grade: A-