Steven Soderbergh – The Magnificent 60s

Britain has an unusually large quota of national treasures in the acting department. Manage to put the ageing Judi Dench, Helen Mirren, or Ian McKellen (Meryl Streep would be the only American contender and look at how she’s been re-born at the box office in The Devil Wears Prada 2)) in front of a camera and you’re pretty much guaranteed funding, media interest and at least an arthouse-style release. But given the dearth of interesting pictures – even though we are apparently in the midst of a mini-boom – such movies are just as likely to run up at your local multiplex and might even be given an advance screening – a “secret screening” was where I came upon this.

I’m a big fan of films about artists of all kinds, writers, musicians but especially the artists who paint – La Belle Noiseuse a big favorite as is Red (2018) – so I didn’t expect a picture where there’s no virtually no painting.

The beauty of this is its main drawback. Ian McKellen gets to talk – and talk and talk instead paint, and paint and paint. There’s hardly an actor alive who can hold the screen so well just by talking. And I suspect the Oscars will come calling. So it makes sense I would guess to just let him do that. It would be a two-hander except most of what Lori Butler (Michaela Coel) does is listen, her main task at the beginning to pick him up on lapses of modern etiquette, even though he’s gay he’s still not allowed to lounge around with his pyjama top open, reminded of the power dynamics of employment etc etc. But fair’s fair, when she does get to talk, she’s also allocated a lengthy monologue – and the only one that’s actually about the process of painting. The plot matters a lot less.

So, like Tar (2022), this has a lot to say about art and only latterly about how art infuses the emotions.

This would have been better if it had followed a simpler narrative instead of saddling the plot with Julian’s inane greedy children Barnaby (James Corden) and Sallie (Jessica Gunning) who have roped in penniless forger Lori to complete a set of famously unfinished portraits – “The Christophers”. But the sub-plot sets off too much improbability not to mention terrible acting.

It would have been better from the outset to set up what eventually takes place anyway, that somehow the presence of Lori inspires Julian to take up his brush again.

Most of Lori’s character, beyond being a poster person for woke sensibilities, is backstory. She was inspired to become an artist after seeing one of Julian’s most renowned works, “Boy Under a Cloud,” completed when he was only six. But then her confidence was destroyed when in some bizarre version of a television art talent contest her work is derided by Julian. Quite why she took to forgery is unclear and even less obvious is why she failed at that given she’s working shifts in a food truck.

There are some interesting nods to social media. Julian keeps the wolf from the door by despatching birthday greetings electronically and by delving into the internet finds out more about Lori than she wishes to reveal, including that she has excoriated his work. There’s not enough of the cut-and-thrust – think the play Art or even Sleuth (1972) – necessary to make this fly, although there are enough twists of a minor nature to keep it afloat.

But given that the wokeness has been a key element of the sorry it’s a shame it suddenly resorts to sentimentality including Lori giving Julian the kind of almighty hug that could have resulted in court proceedings had it been the other way. And even though the end has the kind of twist a film like this needs to survive, I wasn’t at all convinced that suddenly Lori had transformed herself into a multi-media artist given her work so far had been more straightforward.

Fans of Ian McKellen (The Critic, 2023) will revel in the latest in his series of louche characters, by virtue of age permitted to speak his mind without (as with the Meryl Streep character in The Devil Wears Prada 2) fear of censure. The frailties of old age are also to the fore. But given the lashings of dialog/monologue it’s worth noting that some of the best moments are devoid of wordplay, facial expression carrying hidden emotion.

For all that we learn about Lori, her part is remarkably underwritten. Michaela Coel (Mother Mary, 2026) is a rising star so best to cut her some slack. But Jessica Gunning (Baby Reindeer, 2024) and James Corden (California Schemin’, 2025) are truly awful, their characters little more than cut-outs.

Director Steven Soderbergh (Black Bag, 2025) is still in his I’m-cleverer-than-you phase and seems to want to deny his intelligent audience the intelligence to pick holes in the absurd plot. The over-wordy script is written by Ed Solomon (Bill and Ted Face the Music, 2020).

Despite my gripes I did enjoy this, primarily for Ian McKellen rather than anything else who proves why, like Meryl Streep across the pond, he is to be accorded the elevated status of national treasure.

Explain to me how this cost anything like the reported $50 million. Unless the cost of a nightclub scene has gone through the roof. Or someone has slapped an almighty tariff on shooting in Zurich. Or such middling box office attractions as Cate Blanchett and Michael Fassbender, against the laws of marquee valuation, are pulling down salaries in the region of $10 million apiece.

Because this is nothing but a glorified chamber piece, most scenes shot indoors or in secluded locations. There’s no car chase, one minor explosion (drone-triggered), not even a pursuit on foot. Some clever marketing oik has dressed up what’s no more than a BBC TV film as an expensive espionage picture in the hope of hooking a larger audience.

It’s short, little more than 90 minutes, so that’s on the plus side. But the plot’s full of holes, you’re scarcely going to swallow Fassbender and Blanchett, faces welded to stiff upper lip, as a hot middle-aged couple, and I wouldn’t have been at all surprised to see Hercule Poirot or more likely Miss Marple lurch into view for the grand finale with all the potential culprits being set to rights around a dinner table.

Fassbender is so impassive at the best of times his character hardly needs to be expanded to include some OCD, and the most expressive he becomes is, wait for it, hand shaking when he pours a glass of water. The theme, wait for it, is that people who lie for a living are not to be trusted in their domestic lives. And just to polish the virtue-signalling credentials there’s still running amok in MI5/MI6/Black Ops/CIA some rogue top dog who thinks he can stop the unnamed war – presumably Ukraine – by causing a nuclear power plant meltdown in Russia.

And when Pierce Brosnan steals the show in a small supporting role you know your movie’s in trouble.

That said, there’s enough going on to keep you entertained. Top British agent George (Michael Fassbender) begins to suspect – or does he really – that his wife, also a top British agent, Kathryn (Cate Blanchett), is up to no good. So he begins to investigate. Mirror is piled upon mirror, complicated by the occasional murder, so that we are soon knee-deep in the kind of narrative where you don’t know who trust – but, equally, unfortunately, don’t much care because none of the characters is remotely attractive.

At least one them, Freddie (Tom Burke), would have been considered a security risk. So often does he stray he would be catnip for any passing honeytrap. But you might also have asked questions about his current squeeze, analyst Clarissa (Marisa Abela), paranoid as a posse of schizophrenics, who knows exactly how to pass a polygraph test (clenching the anal sphincter one of the tricks in case you’re interested), and as likely as not to ram a carving knife into unfaithful boyfriend Freddie’s hand at the dinner table. Naturally, it doesn’t do much harm, because Freddie is back at work next day with bandaged hand and not investigated by cops over a knife wound that could hardly be covered by the old slipping the shower routing.

Then we’ve got straitlaced psychiatrist Dr Zoe Vaughan (Naomie Harris) with a penchant for erotic fiction, sex in the office (including breaking the cardinal rule of her profession, sex with a patient), and stringing along two men at once, both of whom, Freddie and Col James Stokes (Rege-Jean Page), are engaged in other affairs.

George soon realizes he’s being played as a patsy, and that his investigation has compromised another operation, and facilitated the handover of a top secret document to the Russians.

In the current dearth of movies for the over-40s, make that over-30s not yet suffocating in superheroes and multiverses, this is what passes for entertainment aimed at an adult audience. And it is short, as I said, but this is exactly the kind of low-budget movie with a decent cast that traditionally ends up on a streamer.

For once, director Steven Soderbergh (Magic Mike’s Last Dance, 2023), whose career is littered with self-indulgence, sticks to the knitting, and it’s a more than passable espionage thriller, but the kind that would be more at home on the small screen. Written by David Koepp (Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, 2023).

Neither Fassbender (Next Goal Wins, 2023) nor Blanchett (Tar, 2022) do the most basic task required of a marquee name, which is to set the screen alight, and all the rest, excepting the much-in-demand Pierce Brosnan (Black Adam, 2022) – seven pictures in the last two years – merely trundle along in their wake, saddled with scenes where they express alarm at their deepest secrets being revealed like they have drifted in to some shopworn melodrama.

For all the actual investigation that takes place you could have set this in the kind of remote spot favored by Agatha Christie and played it out in traditional Poirot/Marple fashion.

Interesting but ultimately disappointing.

And the big question remains – where did the $50 million go? And, did it exist in the first place?

Tag: Steven Soderbergh

The Christophers (2026) ***

Black Bag (2025) *** – Seen at the Cinema