Image credit: Warner Bros., Paramount Pictures, MGM, United Artists, Focus Features, Roadside Attractions, Walt Disney Studios, Twentieth Century Fox, Sony Pictures Releasing, Universal Pictures, Lions Gate Films
Spy movies have always had their own corner in cinema, but there's a whole bunch out there that give James Bond a run for his money, and then some.
This list of 25 is packed with films that take the spy game to another level, where it's not all about flashy cars and shaken martinis. Here, heroes might not always wear tuxedos, and villains can be a bit harder to spot.
In 1950s Los Angeles, three radically different policemen use their own methods to uncover a conspiracy that reaches the highest levels of their department.
2. "Chinatown" (1974) Rotten Tomatoes score: 99%
A private detective hired to expose an adulterer in 1930s Los Angeles finds himself caught up in a web of deceit, corruption, and murder.
3. "North by Northwest" (1959) Rotten Tomatoes score: 97%
An advertising executive is mistaken for a government agent and pursued across the country by foreign spies, leading to a desperate struggle to survive and clear his name.
4. "The Conversation" (1974) Rotten Tomatoes score: 97%
A surveillance expert becomes obsessed with a recording that he believes indicates imminent danger, leading him into a web of intrigue and paranoia.
5. "The Manchurian Candidate" (1962) Rotten Tomatoes score: 97%
In the midst of the Korean War, a platoon of U.S. soldiers is captured and brainwashed, leading to political assassinations and a deep conspiracy upon their return.
6. "Body Heat" (1981) Rotten Tomatoes score: 96%
In the midst of a searing Florida heat wave, a woman convinces her lover, a small-town lawyer, to murder her rich husband.
7. "The Insider" (1999) Rotten Tomatoes score: 96%
A research chemist comes under personal and professional attack when he decides to appear in a "60 Minutes" expose on Big Tobacco.
8. "Spy" (2015) Rotten Tomatoes score: 95%
A desk-bound CIA analyst volunteers to go undercover to infiltrate the world of a deadly arms dealer, preventing diabolical global disaster.
9. "Zero Dark Thirty" (2012) Rotten Tomatoes score: 91%
The decade-long hunt for al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden after the September 2001 attacks, and his death at the hands of the Navy S.E.A.L.s Team 6 in May 2011.
10. "Bridge of Spies" (2015) Rotten Tomatoes score: 91%
During the Cold War, an American lawyer is recruited to defend an arrested Soviet spy in court and then help the CIA facilitate an exchange of the spy for the Soviet-captured American U2 spy plane pilot, Francis Gary Powers.
A law firm's 'fixer' finds himself in over his head when he's tasked with cleaning up the mess of a potentially catastrophic lawsuit involving a large agrochemical company.
12. "Three Days of the Condor" (1975) Rotten Tomatoes score: 87%
A CIA researcher returns from lunch to find all his co-workers murdered and must outwit those responsible until he figures out who he can really trust.
13. "A Most Wanted Man" (2014) Rotten Tomatoes score: 85%
A Chechen Muslim illegally immigrates to Hamburg, where he gets caught in the international war on terror while trying to claim his father's ill-gotten fortune.
14. "The Good Lie" (2014) Rotten Tomatoes score: 85%
Sudanese refugees given the chance to resettle in America arrive in Kansas, where their encounter with an employment agency counselor forever changes all of their lives.
An undercover MI6 agent is sent to Berlin during the Cold War to investigate the murder of a fellow agent and recover a missing list of double agents.
17. "Munich" (2005) Rotten Tomatoes score: 78%
Following the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre, a secret Israeli squad is assigned to track down and kill the Palestinians involved in the planning.
18. "Burn After Reading" (2008) Rotten Tomatoes score: 78%
A disk containing mysterious information from a CIA agent ends up in the hands of two unscrupulous gym employees who attempt to sell it.
19. "Kingsman: The Secret Service" (2014) Rotten Tomatoes score: 75%
A streetwise youngster is recruited into a secret spy organization just as a twisted tech genius threatens the world, leading to a blend of stylized action and espionage.
20. "Syriana" (2005) Rotten Tomatoes score: 73%
A political thriller delving into the complex world of the global oil industry, following multiple storylines including a CIA operative, an energy analyst, a disenfranchised prince, and a migrant worker.
A college professor begins to suspect that his neighbor is a terrorist and becomes obsessed with uncovering the truth.
22. "Salt" (2010) Rotten Tomatoes score: 62%
A CIA agent goes on the run after a defector accuses her of being a Russian spy, leading to a series of events that make her question her own identity.
23. "The Good Shepherd" (2006) Rotten Tomatoes score: 56%
The tumultuous early history of the Central Intelligence Agency is seen through the prism of one man's life in this espionage drama.
24. "The Spy Who Dumped Me" (2018) Rotten Tomatoes score: 48%
Two best friends unwittingly become entangled in an international conspiracy when one of them discovers her ex-boyfriend was actually a spy.
A Russian ballerina is recruited to 'Sparrow School,' a Russian intelligence service, where she is forced to use her body as a weapon but her first mission, targeting a CIA agent, threatens to unravel the security of both nations.
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