The Big Picture · Review · Discussion · Top Five · Roundtable · Interview
May 4, 2021/ 93 min/ Sean Fennessey · Amanda Dobbins · Chris Ryan
Sean, Amanda, and Chris Ryan rank their favorite spy movies to mark 'Without Remorse,' then Sean talks to director Stefano Sollima about entering the Clancyverse.
46 films across 7 segments.
AI-generated This episode was transcribed and analyzed with AI models. The matches aren't perfect — expect the occasional misheard title or a link to the wrong film.
‘Without Remorse’Sean Fennessey, Amanda Dobbins, and Chris Ryan
Expected a spy movie, got a revenge-origin action movie about John Kelly, the meaner, brawnier flip side of Jack Ryan. Chris says it plays like an '80s action movie, true to the Cold War-era Clancy source; Amanda says the punching is the point and the international intrigue barely registers.
The State of the Spy Moviegenre chat before the lists
Beautifully shot, Chris says, but plays like a trailer for the novel; the BBC original with Alec Guinness is the one that's page-for-page.
Chris argues it only reads as a spy movie because Le Carré wrote the source novel.
The Richard Burton adaptation Sean says captures the Le Carré vibe but lacks energy.
Chris's marker for the pre-internet, spy-as-expertise era of the genre.
The shift from scholarly expertise to guys in a van hacking phones, per Chris.
A spy movie mostly as an excuse to watch Charlize Theron punch people, Sean says.
Teased as the group's next watch-along; cited as the rare spy story without a clean answer at the end.
Sean's Top Five Spy Movies
Sean's favorite movie ever made: Carol Reed, Graham Greene, Orson Welles, postwar Vienna, the zither score.
His entry point into spy movies at 14, and the reason he never fell for Bond.
Bertolucci's study of a fascist-era spy's psychology, and one of the best-looking movies ever made.
The scariest movie of the '70s, Sean says on rewatch, with Warren Beatty in the middle of Pakula's paranoia trilogy.
Michael Caine's working-class answer to Bond, from the same producers and composer.
Amanda's Top Five Spy Movies
A Stasi surveillance drama about complicity, the un-fun kind of spy movie.
The Best Picture win made people hold it to an unfair standard; it's just a fun, well-made spy movie.
Chris Ryan's Top Five Spy Movies
Chris's admitted cheat: grouped with Sneakers and Spy Game as a Redford spy trilogy. The most harrowing of the three.
The best spy movie of the Bourne franchise, per Chris, for its web of interdepartmental agencies with no clear boss.
John Frankenheimer's Paris/Nice chase movie, David Mamet script, two of the best car chases Chris has ever seen.
Honorable mentions one host, one shoutout
prefers the miniseries, but the movie holds up on its own
Stefano Sollima on ‘Without Remorse’
Sollima pitched Michael B. Jordan on doing his own stunts to keep the film locked to John Kelly's point of view, and calls the underwater plane sequence the one he most regrets audiences won't see in theaters.
Also mentioned raised along the way
In passing Jack Ryan: Shadow RecruitSicario: Day of the SoldadoThe Big Gundown
Not films filtered out: TV, games, ads
TV Zero Zero ZeroLe BureauTinker Tailor Soldier Spy (1979 BBC miniseries)Smiley's PeopleMr. RobotThe Little Drummer GirlThe Night Manager
Games Rainbow Six
Ads Boar's Head