Steven Soderbergh announced retirement nearly a decade ago and ever since, he’s been the most creatively charged he’s been in decades, pumping out interesting idea after interesting idea, sometimes twice a year, and adding a surplus of fresh titles to his gargantuan filmography. His newest, Black Bag, may be the crown jewel of his last two decades. From the very first shot of Michael Fassbender’s back as we follow him down mysterious London streets and into musky lounges in a single take, it zings and zangs with glowingly colorful yet crispy-contrasted cinematography and an energy that feels like Soderbergh flexing every muscle in his directorial arm.

Written by David Koepp, the second of two this year including Presence, there is not an ounce of fat on this script, nor in how Soderbergh organizes all the pieces. In a precisely tight 90 minutes, Black Bag represents the director at his most economical, giving us only the necessary details about these intentionally guarded characters and not letting the plot stray beyond its limits. Soderbergh uses every cent of its $50 mil budget, coating the interior designs with ravishing retro flavor. Despite being contemporary, everything feels ripped from the “le Carre 60s”, with Fassbender even donning a pair of George Smiley specs to wear with his turtleneck and flat cap. It’s impossible not to just sink into the atmosphere, one that feels out of time and yet thoroughly Soderbergh.

Fassbender leads the story as George Woodhouse, a member of British intelligence, who discovers from his superior that his wife, Kathryn (Cate Blanchett), is on a list of names that are suspected of being involved in a plot to leak names to Russian operatives through a program called Severus. Also on the list are a few colleagues of his (played by Tom Burke, Marissa Abela, Rege-Jean Page, and Naomie Harris). Woodhouse’s plan to silently investigate this team begins with inviting them all over for a dinner in the hopes of extracting information. It is not lost on George that his wife cannot be trusted, with the complicated matter of “black bag”, the code word they agree on that allows each of them to conceal private information on their missions from each other, preventing him from interrogation.

As expected, Soderbergh assembles an expert ensemble, all simply having a great time lying, deceiving, and verbally one-upping each other through Koepp’s vicious dialogue that aids in keeping every minute of these confrontations riveting. The entire film moves at a clip, implementing unique framing decisions (the first dinner scene involves a constantly shifting back-and-forth camera setup, as though we are watching them all through changing surveillance footage). Soderbergh is an experimenter and every scene feels like him trying something new and fresh spontaneously mid-filming in all the most exciting ways. It feels improvised and yet you are also so aware of how meticulously it is all planned out.

It may lack a more obvious emotional hook, and its plot does initially feel like a reheating of countless other spy films, but as with most great films, it’s all in the details, and there are so many juicy little details here. Whether the film goes totally under-seen by the year’s end, or still feels incomparable to the larger work in his filmography, this is still a must-see for Soderbergh fans or anyone hungry for great mid-budget adult storytelling. It’s exactly the kind of film the “why don’t they make movies the way they used to” crowd has been clamoring for. To say nothing of the fact that it’s also incredibly, exquisitely romantic and essential to its core, a movie about maintaining a healthy, stable marriage.