"Thirteen years after announcing his retirement, Steven Soderbergh is busier than ever," said John Nugent in Empire. Coming just two months after his last film, "Black Bag" is "tremendous fun: think 'Ocean's 11', if they were spies".
Like that earlier hit, it is "cool and confident" and features an "A-list cast" and a "punchy" script "full of mile-a-minute" dialogue. Michael Fassbender plays an "icy" British spy tasked with identifying a traitor in his agency. When he is presented with a list of suspects, he finds on it the name of his "beloved wife and colleague" (Cate Blanchett), throwing all loyalties into doubt. What follows nods to genre convention, but contains "very little in the way of action". Instead, its "pleasures lie in the dialogue, the twists, the reveals", leading to "a delightful Agatha Christie-style drawing-room denouement" in which the mole is finally exposed.
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