this post was submitted on 20 Apr 2025
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Maybe he should try not making the most boring spy film I’ve ever seen. I’m not hard to impress either. I enjoyed “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy” and tend to love the spy genre by default. So I was excited to see this but HIGHLY disappointed with it. It was boring at best.
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy was a phenomenal film crafted with great care by experts. Comparing self-described mid-market spy films to that one is like comparing your house painter to Van Gogh. It's not that they can't be that good, but if that's your benchmark, you are setting yourself up for disappointment.
I think the more troubling thing is that a filmmaker who made a mid-market spy thriller is just now discovering that audiences have abandoned theaters as the preferred venue. Theaters are too expensive, and wages are too low, for people to just drop $100 on a Friday night watching average movies and eating shitty popcorn. We have too many options, and too little disposable income to tolerate the leveraged abuse of consumers. For 40 years, theaters have squeezed every drop of profit from their privileged market position, and now they cannot afford to keep the lights on.
If you want to make money making average films, you need to meet viewers where they are, at home on their couch.
Back in the early 00s, I had the supreme pleasure of discovering Alec Guinness as George Smiley in the BBC's miniseries masterpiece Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy from 1979, then the sequel and conclusion three years later, Smiley's People, not as transcendent but then again, how could it equal, let alone surpass, perfection.
Around 2010, my first reaction upon hearing of a remake was of complete disdain - "here is an already perfect miniseries, what is it with this incessant compulsion to remake everything?"
So I didn't watch the Gary Oldman movie until a couple of years after it came out, it was playing on TV and decided to give it a try.
To my utter astonishment, I realized I was watching what was to become my favorite film of the entire decade. What an achievement!
Now I love the film and the miniseries equally, as separate mountaintops.
To be honest, I'm not sure if Black Bag is really much of a spy movie. There's barely any action or international intrigue, it's almost all just stuffy british dialogue. For that reason I'd call it more of a mystery/whodunnit flick that just happens to be set in a spy agency. It's definitely no Bond film, but I think it holds up pretty well for what it is. I had a good time watching it.
This is the answer.
Black Bag sucked LARGE. B-minus Netflix-worthless retread tripe with predictable story and plot lines.
Soderbergh should be embarrassed that he made this.