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Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2005)
The Brad Pitt-Angelina Jolie lovefest starts here. Playing a bored married couple that keeps each other's spy life a secret from the other, director Doug Liman (same guy who directed The Bourne Identity) kept the laughs coming. Vince Vaughn helps with that. In fact, the real life off screen romance probably made the film even more popular. A sequel has been rumored for years but nothing official yet.
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True Lies (1994)
James Cameron's third feature with Arnold Schwarzenegger had The Terminator playing a nerdy computer salesman? Not so fast, he's actually a gun-toting spy! But his stay at home wife Helen (Jamie Lee Curtis) doesn't know. (She thinks Bill Paxton is an agent but he's really used car salesmen.) Cameron based his story on the French film La Totale. And maybe you forgot, but Tom Arnold as Arnie's sidekick is super funny.
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Haywire (2012)
Steven Soderberg is at his best with fast and loose independents. A strong male cast (Channing Tatum, Ewan McGregor, Michael Fassbender, Antonio Banderas and Michael Douglas) use all their muscle trying to eliminate Mallory Kane, a highly trained operative whose contract has expired. MMA superstar Gina Carano was cast as the lead: less for her acting skills, more for her baddass fighting. A late night hotel brawl with Fassbender convinces. We really hope Fassbender's recovered by now.
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Salt (2010)
CIA official Evelyn Salt (Angelina Jolie) is accused of being a Russian spy. At headquarters, with numerous armed guards, she escapes with mucho explosions. And we believe every minute she's onscreen. This is what Jolie does best.
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Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (1997)
The genius of Mike Myers spoof on British spy flicks was that even if you never seen a Bond film this ode to the swinging ‘60s was funny to all audiences. The colorful costumes were great eye candy for what is essentially a fish out of water tale. Powers is unfrozen in contemporary times where sexual politics have changed. Myers played several characters. Dr. Evil looked like 007' nemesis Blofeld but his personality was modeled after SNL creator Lorne Michaels. The one-liners ("Groovy, baby! Yeah!") are stale these days but the original remains the best spy satire ever.
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Munich (2005)
Starting with the '72 Olympics hostage crisis in Germany, Steven Spielberg's drama centers on the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad's mission to track down and eliminate the Palestinian terroritsts responsible for the death of Israeli athletes. Though the film was made in ‘05, the feel is pure '70s crime drama. Eric Bana, Daniel Craig, and Geoffrey Rush starred.
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The American (2010)
George Clooney as a killer on holiday. After living in seclusion in a small Italian countryside, he's ordered to fashion a new kind of rifle for another agent. But then he falls in love with a working gal and the job gets "complicated." What's most compelling was the low-tech tension-building setting. Charmer Clooney goes long stretches without speaking.
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Tinker Tailor Soilder Spy (2011)
The best spy stories rely on '50s Cold War paranoia. Gary Oldman fears the British Secret Intelligence has been compromised by a Soviet double agent. The stellar cast: Colin Firth, Tom Hardy, John Hurt and BBC's Sherlock Benedict Cumberbatch were tailor made for this sort of espionage. The several bad blond wigs was a bit off putting though.
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Enemy of the State (1998)
Pre-Millennium tension ran amok with wiretaps, hidden cameras, and something called the world-wide-web. "Wrong man" Will Smith gets caught up in a political cover-up. Jon Voight played the baddie senator. Gene Hackman a former intelligence officer. Before Person of Interest, Smith learned that Big Brother was watching Big Time.
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Burn After Reading (2008)
The Coen brothers followed their award-winning thriller No Country For Old Men with a farce about two dim-witted gym trainers (Brad Pitt and Frances McDormand) who think they've found a CIA agent's secrets diary but really only uncovered a pretty bland operative's memoir (John Malkovich). George Clooney has a clever turn as a D.C. man whose life is complicated by finding Pitt hiding in a closet.
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The Manchurian Candidate (1962 & 2004)
The grand daddy of Cold War paranoia, John Frankenheimer's original starred Frank Sinatra as a former soldier haunted by his past tour of duty. By the film's end, conspiracies are revealed, brainwashing has taken place, and there's an a plan of political assassination. Way ahead of its time in 1962. While the 2004 version lacked the newness, Denzel Washington (in Sinatra's role) was still riveting.
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Spy Kids (2001)
Robert Rodriguez's series (the original is still the best) excels at every child's fantasy: to be a spy equipped with awesomely gooey gadgets and best of all, save their own parents! The FX are cheesy and the acting is incredibly forced, but Rodriquez ultra quick cutting style soars. The series had fun with 3-D way before Avatar.
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The Hunt for Red October (1990)
The first of many films based on Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan novels stars Alec Baldwin as Ryan, and Sean Connery as a Soviet submarine commander. Though the silly English-speaking Russian accents are outdated the claustrophobic tension still works.
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Ronin (1998)
An uncredited David Mamet (writing under a pseudonym) wrote the screenplay and Robert De Niro starred as a former CIA officer who teams up with international agents Jean Reno and Stellan Skarsgard to acquire a briefcase from a bunch of criminals. De Niro taking out a guy with a coffee mug is made of awesome.
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Spies Like Us (1985)
Like every other organization even the CIA has a bottom. Dan Aykroyd and Chevy Chase are too dim to realize they're being set up as fall guys for an assignment in Russia. Originally, a box office disappointment, Spies gained fans in the early days of VHS and cable.
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No Way Out (1987)
Told in flashbacks, Navy stud Kevin Costner is under investigation by his superiors. Sean Young steamed up thing in a limo. Mostly, the story revolves around Costner on the hunt for a KGB mole. One of the best spy thrillers of the '80s still has one of the best last-act shockers.
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Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol (2011)
Some spy capers have great villains, locales, and gadgets. But few have stunts executed by their own star like Tom Cruise's series. The highlight so far) comes at the dizzying heights of Dubai's Burj Khalifa, the world's tallest building, Cruise must scale 20 floors. In real life (seen in the making-of doc) Cruise is out there with a wire. That's it. He understands more than any actor since Steve McQueen that the thrills of supermen are more super with a level of reality. Let's see James Bond do that.
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Le Femme Nikita (1990)
Luc Besson's original French version introduced audiences to the director's bravura action scenes and led to a remake (film and television series) and (indirectly) Alias and Nikita. The hook, at the time, was progressive: a normal gal who is trained to live a double life as an international assassin! In the end, the biggest lesson was not to fall for her handler.
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The Bourne Identity (2002)
A decade ago, Matt Damon realized he was the spy-who-didn't-know-he's-a-spy. This summer, Jeremy Renner continued the legacy but the series first is still the best. The Mini Cooper chase in Paris, the hand-to-hand combat, and love interest Franka Potente gave Bourne his real identity.
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Top Secret! (1984)
Comedy team Zucker-Abraham-Zucker's spiritual follow-up to their mega-hit Airplane! was also a laugh-a-minute, but proved just too out there for audiences. Val Kilmer played an Elvis-like American idol who tours behind the Iron Curtain but then ends up helping the French resistance in East Germany. Looking back, the mash-up of pop music and spy tropes is inspired.