There's a (likely apocryphal) quote from Soderbergh about Ocean's Eleven, one of the greatest movies about America:

I love seeing a movie does what it does and does it well and makes no argument about it. To me, Ocean's Eleven was my opportunity to try and make a movie that has no desire except to give you pleasure from beginning to end — a movie that you just surrender to without embarrassment and without regret.

I don't think many people would ever cite Soderbergh as their favorite director, but: he's got an incredible action economy, is unafraid of failure, challenges the industry more than his contemporaries, and has shipped two stone-cold classics (the aforementioned Ocean's Eleven and Logan Lucky.)

And if the Ocean's trilogy is a riotously entertaining meta-commentary on American cinema, Logan Lucky is a riotously entertaining meta-commentary on the Ocean's trilogy, then Black Bag is, well, not riotous—it's a quiet and subdued film filled with mostly quiet and subdued megastars, but a demonstrably and thrillingly entertaining meta-commentary on le Carre, Agatha Christie, and the trappings of British genre fiction. (Fassbender's character is a really fun riff on Smiley in some respects, though the core of Smiley's character is perhaps his fallibility, his paunch, and unrequited love.)

And, conversely, one of the sweetest and loveliest through-lines of Black Bag is the powerful and honestly inspirational marriage between his characters and Cate Blanchett's. There's a lot of MacGuffin-izing in here and a lot of things that don't quite hold up to scrutiny in much the same way any constituent part of Ocean's Eleven doesn't quite hold up to scrutiny. But the goal of this film, like so many of Soderbergh's, is not scrutiny — it is pleasure, and the luxury in Black Bag's 90-minute runtime cannot be understated, a film that would feel hedonistic if it was not so masterful and self-assured. Every character is given a grace note or two, and this feels a little deeper than the one-note archetype that they embody.

Black Bag is not going into my personal canon. There is, not unlike Knives Out, a certain echoing hollowness deep within it—a sense that it is more interested in response than call. I can't fault it for that, but I can't consider it one of my top 10 or however many films of all time. That aside, this film is flawless. What are you doing? You should clear your schedule, find a friend or a spouse, and watch this movie right now. You'll not have a better use of your time.

★★★★