The Challenge: The 5 Best Spy Movies Better Than The Mission: Impossible or James Bond Franchise

OnScreen Blog is starting a new series where Greg Ehrhardt, editor and columnist for the blog, challenges Ken Jones, Chief Film Critic, on his cinematic knowledge better to inform our readers about the world of movies we can enjoy today.

With Mission: Impossible Dead Reckoning Part 1 coming out this week, the first challenge issued to Ken is on spy movies, specifically, those outside of the Mission: Impossible and James Bond Franchise.

Greg loves the Mission: Impossible franchise, and Ken loves the James Bond franchise. But there’s a world of spy movies outside those two franchises. But are there spy movies better than the best we have seen from Mission: Impossible and James Bond?

The answer is yes, no matter how much you love MI:6 Fallout, James Bond’s Skyfall, or Goldfinger. But which five are the best five movies? Can Ken come up with the definitive list?

Read Ken’s answer below and tell us on Twitter (@onscreenblog) how well you think he did.

5. The Lives of Others (2006)

I remember watching the 2007 Oscars and being outraged that the Best Foreign Language Film category went to this movie. I had only seen Pan’s Labyrinth and was blown away by it. I finally got around to seeing The Lives of Others a year or two later, and then I understood why it had won. This German film takes place in 80s East Berlin, with a Stasi officer as the lead character, surveilling a playwright and his lover. As he surveils them, he becomes sympathetic to them and begins manipulating information to protect them from the state's power. Sadly, the film's lead actor, Ulrich Mühe, passed away just a few months after winning its Oscar.

4. Ronin (1998)

Ronin is a personal favorite of mine. Robert DeNiro leads a group of disgraced and disavowed former spooks hired by an Irish outfit to retrieve a briefcase (McGuffin!). All too quickly, there are various competing interests for the briefcase, internally in the group and externally. This film was directed by legendary filmmaker John Frankenheimer (The Manchurian Candidate, Seven Days in May, Seconds) and was a return to form in one of his last directing credits. Ronin features some of the best car chase sequences ever put to film and uses its European locales well. As if DeNiro, Frankenheimer, and a great ensemble international cast weren’t enough, the script got a punch-up from David Mamet, credited under Richard Weisz's pseudonym.

3. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011)

Any list of spy movies that doesn’t include a John le Carré adaptation somewhere would be fraudulent. There are plenty of great ones to choose from, going as far back as The Spy Who Came in from the Cold up to one of Phillip Seymour Hoffman’s final performances in A Most Wanted Man, but Tomas Alfredson’s 2011 film starring Gary Oldman is my choice.

Oldman’s George Smiley, beaten down by life and on the outs at MI6 in the 1970s, is tasked with uncovering a Soviet mole in the department's ranks. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is methodical, procedural, and a delightful slow burn, with Oldman giving a very stoic and still performance that is so much against his type.

It’s also an unadorned performance from someone known for being a chameleon on screen. It also boasts an outstanding cast of “that guy” British actors.

2. Charade (1963)

Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn lead this comedy from director Stanley Donen. Hepburn’s Reggie, recently widowed after planning to divorce her husband, finds herself the center of attention from several groups interested in getting their hands on a large sum of money that her husband stole during World War II. Cary Grant is a CIA officer whose name constantly changes as he looks out for Reggie but is also on the case for the money and the people trying to find it.

This is the most lighthearted film on the list, as it is a screwball comedy. Grant and Hepburn have great chemistry together; Hepburn’s Reggie is constantly swaying between swooning for Grant’s character and then being repulsed by him. It’s a very charming film. Also commonly referred to as the best Hitchcock film that Hitchcock didn’t direct.

1. NOTORIOUS (1946)

Speaking of Hitchcock, his 1946 film Notorious tops my list. The director made his fair share of spy thrillers, so you could almost make this list exclusively with Hitchcock films, but Notorious is the best. Cary Grant movies occupy the top two positions in this list, as he is a government agent who recruits Ingrid Bergman’s Alicia to infiltrate a group of post-war Nazis hiding out in Brazil connected to her father, a convicted war criminal. A blossoming romance quickly develops between them, even as he has to suppress much of his feelings for her to push her deeper into the arms of a Nazi and, thus, deeper into risk and danger.

Grant and Bergman have some of the best chemistry you will ever see from two people; “smoldering” has never been a more apt description of two actors on screen.

With a 99% Rotten Tomato score a few days before release, we will see if Mission: Impossible Dead Reckoning Part 1 tops all of these movies!

FilmChristopher PetersonJuly 10, 2023Ken Jones, Greg Ehrhardt, The Challenge