13 Thrilling Spy Movies You Can Stream Right Now

John le Carre’s Cold War classic has been adapted to the screen more than once, but Tomas Alfredson’s (Let the Right One In) star-studded version is one of the best spy films of the 21st century, including an Academy Award-nominated leading turn by Gary Oldman as George Smiley, possibly le Carre’s most famous creation, who was conceived as an intentional foil for James Bond and has been called the sort of spy Britain “believes it ought to have: a bit shabby, academic, basically loyal, and skeptical of the enthusiasms of his political master.” (The Guardian)

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“Is it safe?” John Schlesinger’s classic conspiracy film will make you scared of dentists – if you aren’t already – as Laurence Olivier turns in an unforgettable and Oscar-nominated role as Nazi war criminal Christian Szell, who will go to any lengths for a large stash of diamonds taken from victims of Auschwitz. Adapted from the novel by William Goldman (The Princess Bride), this twisty thriller also features Dustin Hoffman and Roy Schneider.

George Clooney made his directorial debut with this adaptation – from a screenplay by Charlie Kaufman – of the “unauthorized autobiography” of gameshow host Chuck Barris, in which Barris claimed that, while not hosting The Gong Show or coming up with The Dating Game, he was working as an assassin for the CIA. Whether you believe that or not, Clooney’s adaptation, featuring an unforgettable starring turn from Sam Rockwell as Barris – not to mention Julia Roberts delivering lines about microfilm that you’d never have imagined – is equal parts funny, startling, and poignant.

Frank Sinatra and Janet Leigh headline this classic of Cold War paranoia, which was remade in 2004 with Denzel Washington and Liev Schreiber. Come for the ticking-clock tension as a desperate Sinatra tries to prove that the man he served with – and commended for a Medal of Honor – is in fact a brainwashed Soviet sleeper agent with plans for political assassination, stay for a villainous turn by Murder She Wrote’s own Angela Lansbury, which netted the actress her third Academy Award nomination.

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In 1972, a Palestinian liberation group called Black September kidnapped and killed nine members of the Israeli Olympic team during the Summer Olympics in Munich. Three of the perpetrators of what became known as the “Munich massacre” survived in the custody of German authorities, who traded them the following month as part of a hostage exchange. In response, the Israeli government launched the secret “Operation Wrath of God,” which authorized a handful of Mossad operatives to hunt down and assassinate the surviving perpetrators. Nominated for five Oscars, Munich is Steven Spielberg’s epic recreation of that operation.

Whether it’s the somber devastation of postwar Vienna, the disorienting Dutch angle camerawork by Robert Krasker, Orson Welles as the enigmatic Harry Lime, or the unforgettable score by Anton Karas, which features only the zither and whose main theme topped the international music charts the year it was released, there’s no other film quite like The Third Man, a haunting and haunted story about a city occupied by the ghosts of war – and the men and women who are still haunted by it.

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Robert De Niro. Jean Reno. Natascha McElhone. Stellan Skarsgard. Sean Bean. Fortunately, John Frankenheimer’s international espionage thriller – in which we’re never sure who, if anyone, we can trust – has a lot going for it besides just star power. It also features some of the best car chases ever captured on film, for one thing, not to mention a tense script co-written by David Mamet.

Did you like Captain America: Winter Soldier, Marvel’s recent stab at making a superhero flick that also felt like a spy film? Well, it was basically Captain America: Three Days of the Condor, a fact that has been acknowledged by the directors, who cited this 1975 classic as one of their main inspirations. It’s no wonder, either, as this twisty, post-Watergate conspiracy thriller retains its capacity to shock, even after all these years – and its themes of whistleblowing and government cover-ups may feel altogether too timely today.

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Paul Verhoeven is known for his bombastic and often satirical films, but one of his best pictures might just be this nuanced look at a Jewish survivor – played by Game of Thrones’ Carice van Houten in a career-defining role – who goes undercover in Nazi-occupied Netherlands during World War II. Far from a simplistic portrait of good versus evil, it is a “tale of gray shades spattered in red,” as Vulture puts it, “alternately depicting espionage as thrilling and sexy, and as a harrowing pursuit that puts spies in constant danger of losing their lives and souls.”

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Francis Ford Coppola made this tight, tense movie about the personal cost of observing the lives of others in-between shooting The Godfather and its acclaimed sequel. Yet The Conversation contains none of the epic – even indulgent – scope which marks many of even Coppola’s best films. Instead, it is stripped down, intimate, and highly experimental; a film that is, not by accident, as much about what you hear as what you see, though what you see remains potent nearly half-a-century later.

While it is the later films in the series, directed by Paul Greengrass, that most often get talked about, the cinematic adaptations of Robert Ludlum’s Jason Bourne novels began with this energetic flick, starring Matt Damon and Franka Potente and directed by Doug Limon (Edge of Tomorrow). Of course, there are also supporting roles by Clive Owen, Brian Cox, Julia Stiles, and even Walton Goggins to keep an eye out for…

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Sure, most of the movies on this list are somber films that meditate on the ethics of surveillance and the toll that spying takes on the soul of the spy – but there’s room for a great spy action flick or two, as well, and the action doesn’t get much better than in the long-running, Tom Cruise-starring Mission: Impossible series. While Brian De Palma’s Hitchcockian first installment might fit more snugly alongside some of these other films, the best action sequences are probably in Brad Bird’s live action directorial debut, which marries over-the-top action set pieces with personal and global stakes better than perhaps any other entry in the franchise.

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Speaking of action set pieces, if Mission: Impossible’s are all about scope, then this small-scale experiment from director Stephen Soderbergh is all about brutality. Casting MMA fighter Gina Carano as his lead, Soderbergh uses her verisimilitude to make the fight scenes in Haywire feel bone-crunchingly real – even while they’re also often jaw-droppingly impressive. The rest of the film is a twisty, European-inspired flick about betrayal and compromised loyalties that features the kind of supporting cast that we’ve come to expect from a Soderbergh film, including appearances by Michael Douglas, Channing Tatum, Antonio Banderas, Ewan McGregor, Michael Fassbender, and more.