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Favorite Spy Movies

THE DEBT Team Pick Favorite Spy Movies

THE DEBT enters the shadowy tradition of great espionage thrillers. We find out what spy movies THE DEBT team likes.

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The Bourne Films

THE BOURNE IDENTITY (directed by Doug Liman) and THE BOURNE ULTIMATUM (directed by Paul Greengrass) jump started the spy thriller by making a Matt Damon a rogue agent dealing with the machinations of the post-Soviet espionage world.

Ronin

John Frankenheimer’s 1998 caper stars Robert De Niro and a stellar cast of European actors (France’s Jean Reno, Sweden’s Stellan Skarsgård, England’s Sean Bean, Czech Republic’s Jan Tríska, etc.) as a pack of thieves who accidentally find themselves fighting foreign forces for a mysterious briefcase.

Spy Game

Tony Scott casts Robert Redford as Brad Pitt’s spy mentor in this 2001 nail-biting adventure of foreign intrigue and friends in trouble.

Three Days of the Condor

Sydney Pollack’s 1975 paranoid thriller makes Robert Redford a low-level CIA intelligence analyst who suddenly finds his entire team wiped out with no idea where to turn for help.

The Good Shepherd

Robert De Niro directed this 2006 historical epic based on the true-life story of CIA founder James J. Angleton with Matt Damon as bright young man brought into a world of deception and destruction.

Evan Eitan

Evan Eitan is a producer behind a number of award-winning Israeli films, including the 2007 original version of THE DEBT (called HA HOV). His full bio can be found here. In seeing the connection to other classic spy films, Eitan notes, “THE DEBT easily could be a true story. A Mossad spy or operative needs to have in his DNA braveness, fitness, cleverness, witty personality, knowledge, top combat abilities, and fluent foreign languishes, because they mainly will operate and take the most dangerous risks because of idealistic reasons.” Eitan gave us five other examples of spy films he admires (for which we have provided short descriptions).