Free Republic

Forget the flashy gadgets and high-speed chases. A film praised by intelligence experts reveals the gritty, moral complexities of espionage like never before.Spy films have long captured the public imagination with their blend of glamour, danger and intrigue. Yet ask anyone with real intelligence experience and you’ll hear a very different story - one filled with ambiguity, ethical dilemmas and painstaking surveillance, far removed from fun gadget-filled action sequences. That’s why Spyscape, the museum and entertainment brand devoted to espionage, consulted real-life CIA officers to find out which film truly gets it right. They got to pick fifteen films that...

The 007 Movie Villains Disconnect with Reality During a recent visit to the Imperial War Museum in London, as I examined the Secret Service exhibits, I could not help but notice the sharp contrast between the villains depicted in James Bond 007 films and the real enemies of the Realm. • KGB Infiltrators Although MI5 and MI6 were riddled with high level KGB infiltrators, Kim Philby, Guy Burgess, Harry Houghton, John Cairncross, George Blake, Donald Maclean, Geoffrey Prime, Anthony Blunt and Sir Roger Hollis, no 007 film has really tackled that reality. That M, at the time of the early...