Black Bag: Deliciously crafty

Black Bag (2025) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Rated R, for profanity, sexual candor and violence

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 3.23.25

Spy flicks don’t come much sleeker, sexier or smarter than this one.

 

Director Steven Soderbergh and writer David Koepp have concocted a tightly plotted, British-based thriller that unfolds over the course of a single week. The execution is mesmerizing, the well-sculpted characters persuasively played by a top-flight cast.

 

George (Michael Fassbender, left) and Freddie (Tom Burke, center) seethe quietly
while their boss, Arthur (Pierce Brosnan) demands a quick result on the search for
a mole known to have stolen a dangerous software cyber-worm.

(As a passing comment, it’s an eyebrow lift to realize that Soderbergh and Koepp also were responsible for the ludicrously overcooked ghost story, Presence, released just a few weeks back. Talk about day and night...!)

Soderbergh controls every aspect of this glossy slice of spyjinks, wearing additional hats as editor and cinematographer (the latter two under his not-at-all-secret aliases of, respectively, Mary Ann Bernard and Peter Andrews). As always, Soderberg loves long tracking shots, and this film opens with an impressive one.

 

Veteran intelligence officer George Woodhouse (Michael Fassbender), an elite operative at Britain’s closely guarded National Cyber Security Unit (NCSC), is summoned to an off-site meeting by his boss, Philip Meacham (Gustaf Skarsgård). A dangerous top-secret software cyber-worm, code-named Severus, has been leaked: likely to Russian agents. Five of George’s colleagues are suspected, and one happens to be his wife, Kathryn (Cate Blanchett), a powerful and trusted NCSC agent.

 

She’s also George’s weakness: He’s unwaveringly devoted to her (and everybody at NCSC knows this).

 

He requests two weeks to conduct a thorough investigation.

 

“Thousands of people will die, if Severus gets into the wrong hands,” Meacham explains.

 

“Oh,” George replies. “One week, then.”

 

Koepp’s dialogue remains this crisp throughout, often with an undercurrent of dark humor.

 

Soderbergh then cuts to George at home, meticulously preparing an ambitious meal for a dinner party. His care and precision, with every little menu detail, mirror his similarly clinical and methodical mind: always thinking four or five moves ahead, like a master chess player. But he’s also fastidious: a few tiny splatters of gravy, on a shirt cuff, demands an immediate change of clothes.

 

He catches Kathryn in their bedroom, getting dressed for the gathering. As a couple, they’re elegant, erudite and obviously whip-smart. Their banter is flirty, but also wary; we wonder what they conceal from each other, out of professional necessity, and also — possibly — for personal reasons. 

The Gray Man: Colorfully overblown

The Gray Man (2022) • View trailer

Three stars (out of five). Rated PG-13, for intense violence and action, and some profanity

Available via: Netflix

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 7.29.22

Given the often exaggerated genre we’re dealing with, this film trundles along reasonably well … until most of downtown Prague — and its entire police force — are blown to bits during the dog-nuts second act (apparently without sparking an international incident).

 

With scores of gun-toting thugs laying waste to downtown Prague while trying to kill him,
Sierra Six (Ryan Gosling) is about to make clever use of a passing tram.

In their obvious efforts to kick-start a new franchise, scripters Joe Russo, Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely have retained very little of Mark Greaney’s 2009 espionage thriller (first in a series of 11 books thus far). Russo and co-director Anthony Russo have uncorked a fast-paced loner-against-the-world saga which — despite becoming increasingly preposterous — ticks all the boxes for folks seeking mindless thrills.

And, in fairness, we get a solid set of (quasi) good guys, victims in peril, and some very very bad guys.

 

During a brief prologue set 18 years in the past, Court Gentry (Ryan Gosling) is rescued from a lengthy prison sentence by upper-echelon CIA handler Fitzroy (Billy Bob Thornton).

 

“What’s the catch?” Gentry asks.

 

“You come work for us,” Fitzroy replies.

 

Turns out Gentry has mad assassin skills, but — as the first action sequence reveals, once we bounce back to the present day — also possesses a strong desire to avoid collateral civilian damage. Gentry has become a highly valued member of Fitzroy’s dark-ops “Sierra” program, his identity submerged beneath the code-name Sierra Six, or simply Six: aka the Gray Man.

 

Unfortunately, Fitzroy was pushed into retirement a few years back, his place taken by the ruthlessly ambitious Agency Group Chief Denny Carmichael (Regé-Jean Page, suitably condescending), who lacks his predecessor’s scruples. Worse yet — for reasons not immediately revealed — he has no use for the Sierra program, and is busily “cleaning house” in a lethal manner.

 

This doesn’t sit well with Deputy Group Chief Suzanne Brewer (Jessica Henwick), who regards her boss as reckless and arrogant. She spends the entire film barking objections at his heels, to the point of turning into a tiresome nag. It’s not a well-crafted role, and Henwick brings nothing to the party.

 

When Six accidentally gains possession of intel that would destroy Carmichael’s career, the latter hires charming, kill-crazy psychopath Lloyd Hansen (Chris Evans) to terminate the final link in the Sierra chain.

 

Hansen, who torments his targets for sport, is introduced while torturing some poor schlub; we therefore know he’s Not A Nice Guy.