Spies and movies were made for one another. We’ve all spent our younger days pretending to be international spies taking out imaginary supervillains in our bedrooms and the fact that the mystery and thrill of being a spy never leave us is a fact. So here are the Top 10 Spy movies for you that are worth your time.
Casino Royale
Director: Martin Campbell
James Bond has been the mascot of spy movies for decades and will probably stay on as the same iconic figure. Casino Royale is the bond movie that redefined and shattered all the pre-existing notions about Bond. Daniel Craig could be the finest Bond after Sean Connery, maybe even better. Well, let’s not get carried away.
Martin Campbell successfully transported the audience back to Bond’s MI6 operative days, where he was gradually craving his license to kill. With blue eyes as steady as his demeanor Daniel Craig made a mark for himself in the film franchise by throwing himself into near-death action sequences, mesmerizing charisma, and of course seducing a glamorous Bond girl (Eva Green).
This is Campbell’s second Bond movie, after “Goldeneye” (1995), but he breaks everyone else’s traditional idea of Bond. He’s helped by Craig, who gives the sense of a hard man, wounded by life and his job, who nevertheless cares about people and right and wrong, and The writer, Ian Fleming for whom Casino Royale was the first Bond novel he ever wrote.
The Sum of All Fears
Director: Phil Alden Robinson
Jack Ryan is America’s answer to the steely British secret agent James Bond. Penned by America’s bestselling novelist Tom Clancy, Jack is a brilliant CIA agent with the resemblances of Harrison Ford, John Krasinski, or in this instance Ben Affleck.
Phil Alden Robinson’s 2002 thriller adaptation of the novel portrays Ryan as a stunningly brilliant analyst who is untrained for any field operations. But when a Neo-Nazi secret scheme surfaces to push the US and Russia into a nuclear conflict, Ryan dives into action and political complications in a dire attempt to save his country from a nuclear attack.
Robinson did a splendid job in delivering a nail-biting, tension-filled plot, planted on stirring performances from brilliant talents like Morgan Freeman, James Cromwell, Philip Baker Hall, Ciarán Hinds, and Liev Schreiber.
Unknown
Director: Jaume Collet-Serra
Jaume Collet-Serra’s “Unknown” is a solid thriller that goes by the numbers, with car chases and gunfights and the plot is interesting and complicated and the cast did a wonderful job at portraying the characters.
The movie follows Dr. Martin Harris (Liam Neeson) and his wife Elizabeth(January Jones) who get into a car crash. Martin survives and wakes up from a four-day coma and things get crazy from there. He is unable to prove his identity to the hospital staff, and when he reaches his wife at the hotel, she claims not to know him. She’s also with a man who claims to be Dr.Martin Harris. For him, the whole world feels like a strange place of paranoia, and the only person who can help him is the waitress Gina played by Diane Kruger.
It’s an unusual head-scratching premise. It’s a mystery as to what the true story is. Is it all in his head? Or is it a reality?
Johnny English
Director: Peter Howitt
Stay away from Peter Howitt’s Johnny English if you are a serious James Bond Fan. But if you enjoy a good parody and always wondered what Mr. Bean being a secret agent would look like, you’ll love it.
By a twist of fate and an unforeseen bomb attack, the infamous MI7 agent, Johnny English, becomes the United Kingdom’s last and only chance to retrieve England’s stolen Crown Jewels. With the help of Britain’s only remaining spy and his assistant bough, Johnny set off to uncover the mystery of the stolen crown jewels as the prison construction tycoon, Pascal Sauvage, becomes the main suspect in their eyes.
Salt
Director: Phillip Noyce
Evelyn Salt is a highly respected and reputed CIA agent who is valued by all including her boss, Ted Winter.
Two years ago she was captured and tortured in North Korea. Her husband and entomologist Mike Krause presses the US government to make a swap and bring her home.
One day a Russian Spy walks into the CIA office and offers an important piece of information that the President of Russia will be assassinated during his visit to the US. The name of the Assassin: Evelyn Salt. Panicked about her husband’s safety, whom she isn’t allowed to contact, she goes on the run. Her boss refuses to accept that she is a spy or a double agent but her actions suggest otherwise. Who is Evelyn Salt? And what is she planning?
The Imitation Game
Director: Morten Tyldum
The Morten Tyldum movie “The imitation Game” is based on the real-life story of the brilliant, impossibly arrogant, and socially awkward British cryptanalyst Alan Turing who is a master of puzzles and renowned as the father of modern computers.
The film is set in the backdrop of World War 2 where the newly formed British intelligence agency MI6 recruits Cambridge Alumnus and genius mathematician Alan Turing to crack Nazi code including the renowned Enigma cipher, which many cryptanalysts claimed to be unbreakable.
Alan goes on to crack the enigma and a ton of German codes with ease and precision of a workaholic mastermind and results in the society and his colleagues calling him a genius. Mainly because they have no clue of how he does it or what goes on in his mind.
But as the military finds more about Alan’s personal life and his sexual orientation, the admiration and respect fade away and they start driving him insane.
Bridge of Spies
Director: Steven Spielberg
The movie is set in the real-life backdrop of the tense negotiations that went on over the prisoner swap of the U2 pilot Gary Powers in the 1960s. In what sounds like a boring political storyline, Steven Spielberg and the Coen Brothers do wonders and you’re left with a movie with an Oscar glow to it. It is not a usual tom hank tear-jerker nor a political gallery pleaser. What we have here is an honest-to-goodness adaptation of a very tense incident that occurred during the cold war.
The story follows Lawyer James B. Donovan who is recruited by the CIA to handle the negotiation mission to prisoner swap a CIA U-2 spy-plane pilot, Francis G. Powers, and the Soviet spy Rudolf Abel, who was captured by the FBI.
In Conclusion, it is a gripping thriller that is bold, grand, and shocking at the same time.
The Lives of Others
Director: Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck
It’s actually pretty hard to believe that Director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck had never directed a full-length movie before ”The lives of others” as it went on to win the Oscar for Best foreign language film and now claims its position among the 50 highest rated films.
The movie tells the story of an East German Secret police officer Wiesler. In 1984 Weisler attends a play by Georg Dreyman, who is considered as the model citizen of Germany but Weisler gets a feeling that Dreyman could have other motives or ideals. He asks for surveillance to be put on Mr. Dreyman and the ministry agrees to it. Later on, Weisler finds out that the minister has personal vengeance towards Dreyman and also lusts after his partner Christa-Maria.
As Weisler spends more time listening in on them he begins to genuinely care more about them. The initial stiffness in him fades away and he begins to intervene in their lives in a good way to protect them whenever possible. Weisler’s officials find out about this and things go wrong pretty soon.
Snowden
Director: Oliver Stone
One could argue that if Edward Snowden didn’t exist in real life, Oliver Stone would have probably invented him. Because the story of a former employee of the United States becoming disillusioned with the country after learning about its wrongdoing fits perfectly into Oliver Stone Portfolio.
Fed up with the deceit that the intelligence community does to the public NSA top contractor Edward Snowden quits his job. Now with the knowledge that the Government collects enormous amounts of data on all forms of digital communications going on in the country including the civilians in the name of security he decided to leak this information to the general public. He instantly becomes a traitor to the government, a hero to the public, and a fugitive from the law.
Spy Kids
Director: Robert Rodriguez
If you’re looking for a family spy movie to watch with the kids on a nice weekend evening look no further than “SPY KIDS”.
The story revolves around the family of secret agents Gregorio and Ingrid who fall in love and raise a family with their two kids Carmen and Juni after retiring from the adventurous spy life. Nine years later they get called back into action when their former colleagues ( the world’s most efficient spies) go missing one by one. They are forced to take down the evil techno-wizard Fegan Floop but the unthinkable happens as they too disappear. Unfortunately, the only people in the world that can save them are their own kids so Carmen and Juni join the family business.
