My eight favorite spy movies

Nobody is ever going to make a spy movie that’s actually about real spies.

For starters, a lot of spy work is un-cinematically technical. For example, one-time pads are a crucial part of many espionage operations, but nobody wants to watch a movie full of extended versions of the “be sure to drink your Ovaltine” sequence from A Christmas Story.

The technical details are symptomatic of the big problem with making an actual spy movie: the spy business is boring. For every vodka martini in a casino in Monaco, there are gallons of cheap beer in squalid hotel rooms in Bogota and Kinshasa. Spies’ cars are more likely to be used for the commute to the office or long hours of dull surveillance work than for high-speed chases.

Of course the movies aren’t exactly legendary for realistic depictions of anyone’s walk of life. However, some pictures come closer than others. The most popular “spy” movies – the Bond series and the Bourne series in particular – have little or nothing to do with actual espionage work. They’re action-adventure movies. Martial arts movies. Even superhero movies in some ways. But the job these guys do isn’t really spying.

Thus this list is devoted to pictures that are closer to the spirit if not the exact practice of espionage. Most of them don’t have much in the way of high-stakes poker or cars that turn into airplanes or submarines. Instead, they have something far better: the flavor of the important, life-or-death business of spying.

 

Confessions of a Nazi Spy – You won’t walk away from this thinking “wow, that was a really good movie.” The look and feel wedges it securely between “potheads are the devil’s pawns” movies of the 30s and “Communists are the devil’s pawns” pictures from the 50s. But the application of such scare-mongering tactics to Germans in 1940 was a watershed moment. It took real guts (not to mention support from the White House) for Warner Bros. to stand up to pressure from the German American Bund and flaunt the Hays Code in order to expose the Nazis for what they really were. The how-we-caught-them stuff also makes this an entertaining spy picture.

Sabotage Agent – Most of the movies in this set – indeed, most spy movies in general – have something to do with the Cold War. But I wanted to include at least a picture or two from the birth of modern espionage: World War Two. And unlike Confessions of a Nazi Spy, this one’s actually good on its own merits as well as representative of its place in film history. The twists and turns are plenty entertaining, but it also keeps us mindful of just how serious the spy business can be, with brutal death constantly waiting around the corner and even befalling some of the characters that a typical Hollywood production wouldn’t have done in. I was also taken with the unintentional moral ambiguity of the project. Our hero’s attempt to blow up a factory is presented as a straightforward act of heroic patriotism, but in the 21st century one can’t help but hear the word “terrorism” whispering in the background. That’s unconsciously symptomatic of the discomfort many Americans in high places felt about the creation of the real-life OSS.

Our Man in Havana – From the heart of the Cold War comes this comedy of errors starring Alec Guinness as a hapless businessman unwillingly entangled in international espionage. In the manner of the best British black comedies, this is a smooth blend of sarcastic humor and grim and sometimes violent (though not graphically so) tragedy. In other words, it’s true to the spirit if not necessarily the literal reality of the spy game.

The Quiet American (1958 or 2002) – I’ll let you take your pick on which version you want to watch. Both pictures have the crucial elements: the ins and outs of the creepy relationship between the United States and Southeast Asia in the years leading up to the escalation of the Vietnam War. Unfortunately they also share the defects of the source novel, particularly an unpleasant emphasis on the protagonists’ shared love for a “native” woman. The contrast between the two is obvious in their dates. The first is an Audie Murphy picture made years before it became obvious what a mess Vietnam would turn out to be. The Michael Caine / Brendan Fraser version has the benefit of hindsight and higher production values, yet remains disturbingly similar to the original production.

From Russia With Love – Say “spy movie” to most people and I imagine the first thing that comes to mind is James Bond. Thus it would be a little weird to have a spy movie list that didn’t include at least one Bond picture. On the other hand, most of the movies in the series aren’t really about espionage. Indeed, From Russia with Love is the closest Bond ever comes to simple, workaday spy business. Here he’s just trying to steal a Soviet decoder rather than save the world from genocidal maniacs or super-terrorists. Though this isn’t the most exciting movie in the set, it is hands-down the most realistic.

No Way Out – When this is being a spy movie, it’s a reasonably good one. Trouble is, it spends most of its running time as a romance and/or crappy murder mystery. Kevin Costner is insufferable, as is Sean Young. Together they made me pray that the famous sex-in-the-limo scene included some form of unseen-yet-highly-effective birth control. But beyond the “star power” and the meandering script, this picture has some solid spy work going on. The struggle to locate a double agent buried somewhere in the Pentagon is less flashy than the sex stuff, but it’s a lot more interesting. The theme of junior officers being granted too much power was also quite timely in the age of Oliver North.

Hopscotch – Like Our Man in Havana, the last two entries in this set are comedies. In this one, Walter Matthau stars as an aging CIA operative forced out of the business by an obnoxious boss. He decides to exact revenge by writing a tell-all book, sending spy shops on both sides of the Iron Curtain scrambling to catch him before he can complete the work. One of the great charms of this picture is how our hero eludes pursuit not through amassing a huge body count (I don’t think there’s a single death in the entire thing) or employing high-tech gadgetry but simply by using his wits and a few improvised tricks. Of all the spy movies I’ve ever seen, this often-silly little picture is in many ways the most realistic.

Sneakers – Of the eight movies in this set, this is the only one I actually own in my personal collection. The picture blends humor and grim reality almost seamlessly. The cast is solid. The script is consistently clever. But best of all is the question posed: what would you do if you had a black box that would get you into any computer system in the country? This Gyges-turned-hacker scenario – complicated by a band of sinister bad guys intent on laying hands on the box and not picky about how they get it – would have been enough to make this a great movie even without the high production quality. It even manages to make some chillingly-prescient political points along the way. Not bad for a little picture that largely escaped notice when it came out and to this day still doesn’t get the attention it deserves.