There is something plausible abut Michael Caine's performance here. He ("Preston") is the antithesis of Sir Alec Guinness's "George Smiley" - a hard nosed, blunt spy catcher who hates toeing the line with his bosses. After a bit of clandestine activity, he is on his way out and is sidelined until a seemingly straightforward fatal accident gets his alarm bells ringing. Meantime, KGB agent "Petrofsky" (Pierce Brosnan) arrives in the UK and - eventually - takes up residence near an American Air Force base equipped with nuclear missiles. What's he up to and can "Preston" find out and thwart his dastardly plan? This is one of Frederick Forsyth's better stories. The plot is clear to the audience, but the two characters exist in isolation (from each other) for much of the drama as neither know of the other's existence! Despite being experienced and pretty well known, the supporting cast isn't the most effective - I struggled a bit with Ned Beatty's "Borisov"; but both Caine and Brosnan work well to build up a sense of menace as the nature of the mission becomes clear and director John Mackenzie develops a tightly constructed and well paced plot into a denouement that goes down to the wire. It's dated a little, and maybe serendipity plays a wee bit too much of a part at times, but it's still very much at the better end of those cold war stories and is still well worth a watch.
A couple vacationing in Morocco with their young son accidentally stumble upon an assassination plot. When the child is kidnapped to ensure their silence, they have to take matters into their own hands to save him.
In 1983 East Berlin, dedicated Stasi officer Gerd Wiesler begins spying on a famous playwright and his actress-lover Christa-Maria. Wiesler becomes unexpectedly sympathetic to the couple, and faces conflicting loyalties when his superior takes a liking to Christa-Maria.
Richard Hanney has a rude awakening when a glamorous female spy falls into his bed - with a knife in her back. Having a bit of trouble explaining it all to Scotland Yard, he heads for the hills of Scotland to try to clear his name by locating the spy ring known as The 39 Steps.
On a train headed for England a group of travelers is delayed by an avalanche. Holed up in a hotel in a fictional European country, young Iris befriends elderly Miss Froy. When the train resumes, Iris suffers a bout of unconsciousness and wakes to find the old woman has disappeared. The other passengers ominously deny Miss Froy ever existed, so Iris begins to investigate with another traveler and, as the pair sleuth, romantic sparks fly.
When Ethan Hunt, the leader of a crack espionage team whose perilous operation has gone awry with no explanation, discovers that a mole has penetrated the CIA, he's surprised to learn that he's the prime suspect. To clear his name, Hunt now must ferret out the real double agent and, in the process, even the score.
With computer genius Luther Stickell at his side and a beautiful thief on his mind, agent Ethan Hunt races across Australia and Spain to stop a former IMF agent from unleashing a genetically engineered biological weapon called Chimera. This mission, should Hunt choose to accept it, plunges him into the center of an international crisis of terrifying magnitude.
Retired from active duty, and training recruits for the Impossible Mission Force, agent Ethan Hunt faces the toughest foe of his career: Owen Davian, an international broker of arms and information, who's as cunning as he is ruthless. Davian emerges to threaten Hunt and all that he holds dear – including the woman Hunt loves.
Near the end of the Korean War, a platoon of U.S. soldiers is captured by communists and brainwashed. Following the war, the platoon is returned home, and Sergeant Raymond Shaw is lauded as a hero by the rest of his platoon. However, the platoon commander, Captain Bennett Marco, finds himself plagued by strange nightmares and soon races to uncover a terrible plot.
After five (or six) years of vanilla-wedded bliss, ordinary suburbanites John and Jane Smith are stuck in a huge rut. Unbeknownst to each other, they are both coolly lethal, highly-paid assassins working for rival organisations. When they discover they're each other's next target, their secret lives collide in a spicy, explosive mix of wicked comedy, pent-up passion, nonstop action and high-tech weaponry.
High school student David Lightman has a talent for hacking. But while trying to hack into a computer system to play unreleased video games, he unwittingly taps into the Department of Defense's war computer and initiates a confrontation of global proportions. Together with his girlfriend and a wizardly computer genius, David must race against time to outwit his opponent and prevent a nuclear Armageddon.
Construction worker Douglas Quaid's obsession with the planet Mars leads him to visit Recall, a company that manufactures memories. When his memory implant goes wrong, Doug can no longer be sure what is and isn't reality.