Does the thrill of the chase excite you? Do you feel your adrenaline pumping when you watch stories about secret agents hiding in plain sight? If yes, then spy movies are just the thing for you. They are a blend of genres and ideas coming together to support a simple premise about a person going undercover on official business to do their job.

Spy movies can be stressful and philosophical, but they can also be fun, exciting, and even action masterpieces. Fortunately, the 20 best spy movie masterpieces of all time have all those elements, and there's a feature for both hardcore fans of the genre and newcomers who'd like to jump into the fierce and duplicitous world of espionage.

20 'Black Bag' (2025)

Image via Focus Features

Black Bag is quite fresh, so it can be hard to place it among the best of all time, but it's a heavily underrated spy film that combines the romance and thriller genres with espionage. Black Bag is a sleek and sophisticated return to the intelligent, character-driven spy thriller of the Cold War era; director Steven Soderbergh successfully updates it for the 21st century. The film's visual identity is very on-brand for Soderbergh, and together with great editing and snappy, intelligent dialogue, Black Bag feels nostalgic and fresh at the same time.

Black Bag follows George Woodhouse (Michael Fassbender) and his wife, Kathryn (Cate Blanchett), two elite intelligence operatives whose marriage is built on a foundation of absolute trust and professional respect. But their bond is tested when George is tasked with identifying a mole within their agency, and Kathryn ends up on the shortlist of suspects. With just days to find the traitor, George finds a way to get the truth out by inviting all the suspects to a dinner party at his and Kathryn's home. Black Bag is a mature, sexy, and gripping battle of wits that you'll have to watch more than once to truly learn all of its secrets.

19 'No Way Out' (1987)

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No Way Out is a quintessential 1980s political thriller that builds to one of the most memorable twist endings in cinema history. It was based on the novel The Big Clock by Kenneth Fearing, and it received favorable reviews and was fairly successful at the box office. While gaining favor with critics and audiences at the time of release, No Way Out was left under the radar; today, we consider it a masterpiece of espionage thrills.

No Way Out follows Lt. Commander Tom Farrell (Kevin Costner), a young naval officer who takes a high-level position at the Pentagon. He begins a passionate secret affair with a beautiful woman, Susan Atwell (Sean Young), unaware that she is also the mistress of his new boss, the ruthless Secretary of Defense David Brice (Gene Hackman). After Susan ends up dead, Brice's chief of staff, Scott Pritchard (Will Patton), devises a plan to cover it up by blaming the murder on a fictional Soviet mole. A sleek, tense, and masterfully crafted thriller, No Way Out keeps the audience guessing until its final, shocking revelation.

18 'Mission: Impossible—Fallout' (2018)

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The peak of the long-running franchise, Mission: Impossible—Fallout is a breathtaking feat of action filmmaking where director Christopher McQuarrie and star Tom Cruise push the series to its highest limit. Fallout can be found on "best of" lists very often, with many deeming it one of the most exciting movies of the past decade, the 21st century, or even all time. The plot is a complex web of double-crosses that sends the team across the globe, but that story is, more than anything, a setup for a series of incredible practical stunts, from a HALO jump (that Cruise did over 100 times) to a helicopter chase through the mountains, making it one of the most spectacular action films ever made.

Fallout follows, once again, Ethan Hunt (Cruise) and his IMF team on a desperate mission to recover three stolen plutonium cores from the terrorist-for-hire group, the Apostles. They're forced to partner with a ruthless CIA assassin, August Walker (Henry Cavill), who is skeptical of their methods but is also suspected by Hunt. The coordination of the practical effects and stunts involved precision and great physical fitness, and as a form of high-adrenaline espionage, it's a beautifully crafted masterpiece.

17 'Argo' (2012)

Image via Warner Bros. Pictures

Argo is an Oscar-winning film that Ben Affleck directed, produced, and stars in. It was based on a true story from the 1979 Iran hostage crisis, but many people find the fictional parts to overtake the true nature of the story and make it a less compelling watch. Despite creative liberties, though, Argo is anything but unwatchable—it's a tense and remarkable star-studded thriller with a lot of great moments of suspense and true danger. It also reflects on Hollywood, balancing some good old satire and dark humor to keep viewers of all sorts engaged.

As mentioned, Argo is based on the events of the Iran hostage crisis in 1979. During the storming of the US embassy in Tehran, six American diplomats manage to escape to the home of the Canadian ambassador. Knowing it's only a matter of time before they are found, the CIA sends in exfiltration expert Tony Mendez (Affleck), who proposes creating a fake science-fiction film called Argo and passing the six diplomats off as a Canadian location-scouting crew. The film chronicles the team's dangerous mission, making for an exciting high-stakes spy thriller worthy of its Oscar win.

16 'The Age of Shadows' (2016)

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If The Age of Shadows sounds unfamiliar, it's because it's a sprawling and stylish South Korean period thriller set in the 1920s during the Japanese occupation. Director Kim Jee-woon takes a painful period in Korean history and depicts the espionage and struggles for independence with breathtaking set designs, tense train sequences, and spectacular shootouts, creating a morally complex and visually stunning epic about loyalty, betrayal, and the fight for freedom.

The Age of Shadows follows a cat-and-mouse game between the members of the Korean resistance, who are trying to smuggle explosives into Seoul to destroy Japanese colonial facilities, and the Japanese police force determined to stop them. At the center of this conflict is Lee Jung-chool (Song Kang-ho), a once-respected resistance fighter who has now become a compromised mole for the Japanese. He is ordered to infiltrate the resistance cell, but as he gets closer to its charismatic leader, Kim Woo-jin (Gong Yoo), he finds his loyalties torn. This is one of the more spectacular, blockbuster-like spy films, but it has a pure 100% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and it might be the only one on this list.

15 'The Lady Vanishes' (1938)

Image via Metro Goldwyn Mayer 

One of Alfred Hitchcock's finest British films, The Lady Vanishes, is a masterful blend of comedy, suspense, and mystery set almost entirely on a train traveling through Europe. The film is a perfect example of Hitchcock's ability to create tension from a simple premise, while the witty banter between the leads and the interesting supporting cast makes it rewatchable and greatly entertaining. This is the movie that got Hitchcock to Hollywood, and he returned to directing in Britain only three times after moving away.

The Lady Vanishes follows the young socialite, Iris (Margaret Lockwood), who befriends an elderly, kind governess, Miss Froy (Dame May Whitty), just before their train departs. When Iris wakes from a nap, Miss Froy has disappeared, and all the other passengers, including a young musicologist, Gilbert (Michael Redgrave), who agrees to help, deny she ever existed. As Iris desperately searches for proof of Miss Froy's existence, she uncovers a web of conspiracy and intrigue. The events unfold slowly and with a lot of hidden clues; besides this, the chemistry between Lockwood and Redgrave is one of the best reasons to enjoy The Lady Vanishes.

14 'Goldfinger' (1964)

Goldfinger is the feature that established the James Bond formula, introducing iconic elements that would define the film series from there on out, from the pre-credits sequence and the Q Branch with its arsenal of gadgets (including the legendary Aston Martin DB5) to a colorful villain with a bizarre henchman (Oddjob). Here, Bond is at his most confident and cool, while Sean Connery solidifies his spot as the greatest Bond of all time.

Goldfinger follows James Bond, who is assigned to investigate the business operations of the eccentric and wealthy Auric Goldfinger (Gert Fröbe). The mission takes Bond across the globe, from Miami to the Swiss Alps, leading him to uncover Goldfinger's vicious world-dominating plan. Bond meets several people along the way who are out to get Goldfinger, and they join forces for a short time before Bond turns out to be the ultimate hero. Goldfinger remains the quintessential 007 adventure, and it's pretty much a blueprint for globetrotting espionage adventures. It's a film of pure, stylish, and thrilling entertainment.

13 'The Bourne Ultimatum' (2007)

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The Bourne Ultimatum is the third installment in the Jason Bourne series; it's a relentless masterclass in modern action filmmaking, directed with kinetic, documentary-style intensity by Paul Greengrass. The action moves at light speed, it seems, taking Bourne from London and Madrid to Tangier and NYC and forcing him into brutal fights, chases, and confrontations. This is the film that perfected the shaky cam filming style, which helped the action thriller genre feel grittier and a little more alive. And while the shakiness was a sore point for some critics, others generously included Ultimatum in their favorite movies of 2007.

The Bourne Ultimatum picks up immediately where The Bourne Supremacy left off; the film follows a still-amnesiac Jason Bourne (Matt Damon) as he continues his global quest to discover his true identity. His investigation leads him to a British journalist who has been investigating a secret CIA program called Blackbriar, forcing Bourne to stay one step ahead of the agency's ruthless assassins. The Bourne Ultimatum provides a satisfying conclusion to Bourne's overarching story that began in The Bourne Identity, so it is a movie best enjoyed in the company of its predecessors.

12 'Casino Royale' (2006)

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If Goldfinger established Sean Connery as the best Bond actor, Casino Royale established Daniel Craig as the realest, rawest form of Bond we've probably ever seen. No longer a suave and cool-headed secret agent, Bond has now become a man who loves, bleeds, and has regrets. By stripping away the gadgets and one-liners, Casino Royale reveals the character's brutality and emotion; it also gives Craig a chance to show off his physicality, as well as Bond's, turning him into a weapon himself. Casino Royale is visceral, thrilling, and romantic—a true masterclass in spycraft.

Casino Royale takes things back to basics, showing James Bond as a newly minted "00" agent. He's raw and reckless but already a coldly efficient killer, and his first major mission is to stop the terrorist-funding banker Le Chiffre (Mads Mikkelsen) by beating him in a high-stakes poker game at the Casino Royale in Montenegro. Bond is assigned a beautiful treasury agent, Vesper Lynd (Eva Green), to manage the funds, and as the game progresses, Bond and Vesper begin a genuine romance, forcing him to lower his guard for the first time. What we see in Casino Royale is material for the ages: a human and fallible secret agent, capable of love, and even more capable of murder.

11 'Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy' (2011)

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Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is an adaptation of John le Carré's classic novel of the same name; it was directed by Tomas Alfredson, and it's an atmospheric, dense, calculated, and brilliantly acted puzzle. It's not the first adaptation of the novel—Alec Guinness led a brilliant series on the BBC in 1979—but this one's immersive when it comes to depicting Cold War paranoia and the bleak, gray world of le Carré's espionage. This was, surprisingly, the first-ever Oscar nomination for Gary Oldman as Best Actor, but he didn't win.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is set in London during the 1970s and follows George Smiley (Oldman), a retired MI6 agent secretly brought back to uncover a Soviet mole at the highest level of British intelligence, known as "The Circus." The mole is one of four trusted men within the inner circle, and Smiley, using bits of information from a compromised agent in Hungary, must piece together clues, revisit old cases, and conduct covert interviews to out the spy. Smiley is a force to be reckoned with, and Oldman's performance has undoubtedly made him an ideal candidate for the lead in Slow Horses. Watch the film to also spot the rare John le Carré cameo.