Best Spy Movies (that don't involve Mr. Bond)

Yes, its time to talk about Spy movies......pretty damn popular it seems, at least in its current form, formula, and genre-definitions since the 1960's....

Howevever my fellow gangsters, here is a rule. Lets not discuss any Bond movies in this thread. I'll have a seperate thread for that darn limey agent sometime in the future(so there would be enough independent room for folks to post how much the last few 007 flicks sucked), but instead lets talk spy movies without Mr. Bond.

Me, I quite dug THE BOURNE IDENTITY and the recent sequel THE BOURNE SUPREMACY. The first film was a burst of fresh air from all the Bond and Mission:Impossible-type movies out there. Not to mention that because of this movie is why I actually think of Mr. Matt Damon as an "actor" now. I mean before BOURNE, I never bothered to watch any of the movies he was featured in(save for DOGMA and all those Kevin Smith movies). Now after seeing Damon's work like THE TALENTED MR. RIPLEY and GOOD WILL HUNTING, he IS a good actor and has a good future in front of him...unlike his fellow friend-actor "Ben".

Meanwhile, the sequel(and one of a handful of movies from this summer I actually liked) was while not as good as the first film, it was a pretty solid good sequel. Of course, the much-bitchslapped camera work didn't leave me sick or disoriented or whatever that 70% of the internet keeps repeating. Of course maybe I'm tolerant after all the crap by Michael Bay and McG I've been through, you know like a vaccine or something.

Anyway post your favorite non-BOND spy movies, or cap the back of my skull with a silencer, whatever comes up first.

John Irvin's 1979 adaptation of Le Carré's Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is the absolute pinnacle of the spy film. With heaps of tension, a labyrinthine plot, brilliant acting (Sir Alec Guinness as George Smiley is one of the most perfect casting decisions ever made), and capturing the feel and tone of the superior book well, this is the epitome of spy fiction/film.

Bourne Identity? A spy film? Hmmm, looks just like another car-chase, cliché-ridden action feast relying on witty dialogue and amazing stunts to me. I could be wrong, as I've never seen it, but it looks far from a true spy film. I ADORE the Bond films, but their influence on the rest of cinema is arguably a bad one, in that they made it fashionable for spies to be iconoclastic, daredevil superheroes.

Mick

Our Man Flint, In Like Flint, basically Flint movies.

Any Johnny English

Spy Kids 3

This is a joke, right?

I would have to give my points to "The 39 Steps," "The Man Who Knew Too Much", and "North by Northwest". Some Great Hitchcockian Spy Thrillers.

I also would like to see Foreign Correspondent.
A Hitchcock spy thriller. Charles Bennett and Joan Harrison were Original Screenplay nominees.

Doc

I loved "The Man Who Knew Too Much"

Ronin

The Spy Who Came in From the Cold

Another great spy movie : Kevin Cosner's "No Way Out."


Don Cardi

To quote Family guy:

"I've never been this confused since I saw 'No Way out'"

-" How does Kevin Costner keep getting work?

Spy Hard

Good flicks so far that I can see. I mean somebody besides me HAS seen OUR MAN FLYNT. Amazing!

Ya Capo, why bash a movie you haven't seen? I mean some movies look friggin awful from trailers/TV spots/etc., but ya I liked the BOURNE movies as well.

Now speaking of overrated spy movies....I have to say, but M:I 2....in specially decoded lettering....S-U-C-K-S. Really shows how John Woo went from being the "Asian Martin Scorsese" to just being a joke of his former self. Sad really. Hell, the first M:I movie "at least" had Brian DePalma direct(or at least did what he could with the material under Cruise's egomaniac control)a movie into the territory of "watchable."

Anyway, another classy oldie good cold war spy movie that rocks is of course the Robert Redford/Cliff Robertson/Max Von Sydow 70's flick THREE DAYS OF THE CONDOR.

I saw that in its theatrical release (probably now 40 years ago) and I STILL don't understand that movie. It was dry, slow-moving and boring. (I did get to see it as part of a double bill, and the other movie - "The Bedford Incident" - with Sidney Poitier and Richard Widmark, was superb).

How about some of the Tom Clancy books turned into movies? "The Sum of All Fears" and "Clear and Present Danger" translated into decent movies.

The "spy genre" was one of Hitchcock's favorites.

He also made "Saboteur", starring Bob Cummings (1942), which is memorable for its final scene, in the Hitchcock tradition, atop (ironically) the Statue of Liberty.

And "Torn Curtain", starring Paul Newman (1962). Not one of his better films IMO, but if you're a Hitchcock fan.....

This is actually a remake of a film noire classic, "The Big Clock" (1948), starring Ray Milland and Charles Laughton, and directed by John Farrow (Mia's father).

Although it's not a spy movie, the plot elements are basically the same. It's not well known and difficult to find, though -- I doubt if it's out on DVD. If you ever run across it, grab it.
Those golden days of the double feature. Kinda like the doubleheader.

"The Bedford Incident" was superb. The conflict between Widmark and Poitier. The tension....

Given the cold war setting and the subject matter, it could be kind of considered a spy movie as well.

Not as good as the books themselves.

The Clancy books are fantastic. The films aren't (I'm not saying there bad by any means).

QTN, I didn't bash The Bourne Identity. I simply said it looks like an action movie. Big difference.

Omar, The Spy Who Came in From the Cold is another Le Carré adapation, and one I'd like to see. SC, I empathise with you completely when you say you don't understand it, and even when you say it was slow-moving and dry (Le Carré, boring? No! :p ). But that's Le Carré. David Cornwall (Le Carré was a pseudonym) was a spy himself, and his fiction tells it how it is: cruel, cold, slow, dull, frightening, tense. That's why he's unsurpassed. If anybody here has seen Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, I also recommend the second part: Smiley's People.

How could I forget Hitchcock's outings?! Foreign Correspondent is, I think, his best spy thriller, but they're all magnificent, really.

Which one? I've only seen the original; I hear the remake is inferior...?

I've watched Le Samouraï thrice in three days this week; not a spy film, but there's an amazingly realitsic scene in which two cops plant a bug in a flat. And there's a tailing sequence on the Paris Metro which puts The French Connection to shame.

Mick

I've looked it up, and it gets three stars in Halliwell's Film Guide. Did you know that it was Poitier's first role without a reference to his colour?

Mick

I agree the the Clancy-film adaptations are "meh" with one exception:

John McTiernan's THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER.

I never read the source novel, but I really don't give a s*it if its even close to the text. A great sub/spy thriller that formed a corner what me and my friends call director McTiernan's "Holy Action Trilogy" that also includes PREDATOR and DIE HARD.(Though while his audio commentaries have interesting info, McTiernan is damn boring. LOL)

I get ya Capo, sorry for whatever. Can we agree in united solidarity though that M:I 2 sucked?

QTN, I think Alec Baldwin is a better Jack Ryan than Harrison Ford. Connery plays his role well too. It's quite close to the book (which is brilliant, and also Clancy's first). The one novel I always wanted to see made as a film was Clancy's Cardinal of the Kremlin, which is his best IMO, though Executive Orders has to be up there too.

Mission:Impossible 2 is a typical Woo film: overloaded with clichéd one-liners, beautiful stunts, slow-motion sequences that lose effect due to the number of times they're used, and a predictably plot; nonetheless, I always enjoy it when watching it. Not a patch on the first though.

Mick

that was great

The Tall Blonde Man With One Black Shoe -- the overdubbed French original, not the lame remake with Hanks and Belushi.

tony b.