

But of all the films in the franchise, Mission Impossible: Fallout is widely considered to be the franchise’s best.

Mission Impossible is such an indomitable franchise that, at this point, it would almost make sense to have a top ten list of only Mission Impossible movies. From Mission Impossible to Atomic Blonde, here’s a look at our picks for the top 10 best spy movies. This transition has made it trickier to demarcate who exactly is a spy versus who’s just a government employee who happens to have a handgun.īut for the purposes of this list, we considered any movie where espionage played a role, and gave priority to movies where the leading character or plot revolved around espionage. As a genre, it’s hard to nail down what puts a film squarely in the “spy movie” category, especially as the moral simplicity of tuxedo-ed 20th century movie spies has begun to fade away and the more nuanced and slightly less well dressed white-collar spies of modern day have gained precedence. They’re a category of their own, encompassing everything from James Bond to Jason Bourne and carried by actors ranging from Saiorse Ronan to Will Smith. Spy movies are more than just an action movie subgenre.
