It is old hat to say that Steven Soderbergh’s movies are stylish, but a look through the auteur’s catalog inspires few descriptors that are more fitting. The director of 35 feature films since 1989’s Sex, Lies, and Videotape, Soderbergh knows when to begin and end a scene. He understands what characters should wear and how production design can alter the mood of entire setpieces. Most importantly, he grasps how to pace a movie, a dying art in an age of bloated comic-book extravaganzas. Put these gifts together, and one gets Black Bag, the director’s finest effort since Out of Sight (1998) and a serious contender for best picture of the year.
Black Bag begins as Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? for the Vauxhall set. Instead of
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