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[Spy Movies] : (clever subtitle)
Ethan Smith
Origin name: Beart4toArlington, VARegistered User regular
Origin name: Beart4toArlington, VARegistered User regular
So Spy Movies. A well made spy movie will combine the story twists of the detective film, with the intelligent politics of a political thriller. My best friend and I, during the summer when we have to distract ourselves from the horrific amount of unemployed we are, tend to watch double features, and over time, we've come to like spy movies more than any other genre.
AMAZING SPY FILMS--
The Recruit
The reviewers will tell you it's a crappy film. THEY ARE LYING. This is a pretty good movie, with some pretty good twists, especially considering it drags you in as a 90-minute popcorn flick and not a film that'll keep you on your seat. Beyond that, Pacino is a good actor as always, and the douchy mentor stereotype was made for him.
Breach
The true story of the FBI trying to catch the biggest leak we've ever had in the history of intelligence. Because it's a real life story, it isn't as strong on the massive twists, but it's still a well made and well acted movie.
Casino Royale
Because motherfucking James Bond
this thread is to try to get other spy movies as suggestions, because damn my friend and I are running out of movies to watch
AMAZING SPY FILMS--
The Recruit
The reviewers will tell you it's a crappy film. THEY ARE LYING. This is a pretty good movie, with some pretty good twists, especially considering it drags you in as a 90-minute popcorn flick and not a film that'll keep you on your seat. Beyond that, Pacino is a good actor as always, and the douchy mentor stereotype was made for him.
Breach
The true story of the FBI trying to catch the biggest leak we've ever had in the history of intelligence. Because it's a real life story, it isn't as strong on the massive twists, but it's still a well made and well acted movie.
Casino Royale
Because motherfucking James Bond
this thread is to try to get other spy movies as suggestions, because damn my friend and I are running out of movies to watch
Ethan Smith on
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The Russia House
Three Days of the Condor
Instant Watch
The Spy Who Came in From the Cold
The 39 Steps
Notorious
Sneakers
Instant Watch
Saw this last Saturday at a hotel. Enjoyed it a great deal.
great fun
It has a great mystery which creates some really incredible tension that just ratchets up all through the film. Val Kilmer puts on a grim performance, sort of a cross between Jack Bauer and Sam Fisher from Splinter Cell.
The gist of the plot is that a Senator's daughter goes missing, the media is catching wind of it, scandal is involved and Black Ops Problem Solver is called in to contain the scandal and recover the daughter. There are some great twists that come quickly. If you blink you may miss them. Lots of awesome subtext that rewards subsequent viewings.
It was directed by the same guy who directed Ronin, with Robert DeNiro. Which is another awesome spy movie.
If you haven't seen these, check them out.
edit: Oops. Ronin wasn't directed by David Mamet (Spartan's Writer/Director). John Frankenheimer directed Ronin. Mamet did writing on Ronin and was credited under a pseudonym because of some kind of studio dispute.
I seem to remember Spy Game and The Good Shepard (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0343737/) being decent.
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Also Spartan is great for the layers of subtext and intrigue laid over a straightforward "Are you a bad enough dude to rescue the Senator's daughter?" plot.
We watched this in my Civics class senior year of high school and I've shown it to tons and tons of people. The last few minutes are totally chilling.
Also, The Good Shepherd is really good, too, despite Angelina Jolie's acting.
Bah, I came to post Spy Game (in my head it was "the recent one with Robert Redford except he's still dreamy as an old dude") but was beaten by two* posts! Curses!
I would submit that the first Tom Cruise Mission Impossible - please, try to forget the sequels even exist - was a passable spy flick that gets a bad rap primarily due to Cruise and the following two films. It may also be that nostalgia clouds my memory; I was 9 when I saw it in theaters and it was a huge deal for me at the time (ZOMG PG13!) so I may be totally unable to judge it objectively. Still, though, it stood out to me that with a relatively limited amount of actual fight scenes (or action of any sort) my nine-year-old self was properly glued to the seat. Also, many lulz in the beginning of the movie, where the glasses-cam (which, in 1996, was future technology) is now probably out-of-date by the standards of toys you can buy from Thinkgeek.
EDIT: *three, or four, depending on how you count, now that I've actually posted this
The Manchurian Candidate (Sinatra version)
[La Femme] Nikita (1990 Luc Besson version)
What's Up, Tiger Lily?
Those last 2 probably fail the "intelligent politics" requirement, though.
For example: it is a common meme that government / intelligence agencies computer / communications stuff has amazing capabilities which are only a split second away at the touch of a button, linking in hundreds of databases and millions of inputs more or less instantly, able to switch from one to the other with ease and giving an all-seeing eye into whatever you could possibly want. Amazing stuff. Compare this to the doddery, limited, buggy, barely functional computer network you know at your place of work. Then mix in a state sector ethos which tends to be 10 years behind the private sector curve, hires amateurs into technical roles and gives them minimal, poorly delivered training to be competent, while rarely punishing failure by getting rid of the incompetent. So...why the hell does anyone expect the US government / military / intelligence agencies can order a pizza online, let alone do lightning fast tech wizadry stuff? I'd look to Silicon Valley if you want to find that.
This applies to Spy Game and (particularly bad) Body of Lies as much as Casino Royale and Bourne. Film-makers and such pull the same trick that keeps bookies in business; they don't portray reality, they portray what people expect reality to be. Which, since that expectation has mostly been shaped by films, TV and books, makes them seem pretty spot on.
So my choice is, still great though pretty dated: BBC TV series of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
Also for some reason nobody questions why computers in spy films are literally the only computers in the world which don't run on Windows. Probably because though you can easily make people believe that one can access any CCTV camera halfway across the world in a matter of seconds with a couple of keystrokes, making them believe that Windows works is a fiction too far.
The Good Shepherd was a dull pretentious wank.
If movie computers ran Windows my sense of disbelief would have to be suspended whenever they weren't hacked in a matter of seconds with a couple of keystrokes.
I'm pretty sure The Recruit actually put a bunch of fucking text on the screen when the characters were "hacking," which blew my mind at the time, but then went on to do other silly things with computers to make me go WHARRGARBL.
I remember the second or third Matrix had an real UNIX flaw in hacking the system in the nuclear power plant.
Mind. Blown.
For three reasons: first, that someone actually researched Unix flaws for a Hollywood film's hacking sequence, second, that it was in a goddamned Matrix sequel, and third, that I somehow missed this!
Yep, it was pretty cool when I saw it because I remembered it being patched a few months previously.
I really like this movie. It's so rare to find people who've even heard of it though.
I think one of my favorite things is that it never gets crazy unrealistic. Kilmer never does anything really unbelievable. But he's still badass.
"In the city, always a reflection. In the forest, always a sound."
"What about the desert?"
"You don't want to go to the desert."
I'm kindof hit and miss on Mamet's movies, but this sounds like a good one.
For the uninitiated:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hopscotch_(film)
It most certainly is, as it's written by a Spy Author as a tribute/play on another spy Author's (Among other things) work.
It's just like a giant shout out. I love it.
...But I suppose that's kind of off topic
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0111503/