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Espionage and the exposure of classified secrets often go hand in hand. While not every film on this list received critical acclaim, each one highlights the high stakes of revealing classified information and explores the motivations behind such actions.
10. Films About the Cambridge Five
Drawn to the Soviet Union's idealistic promises, the Cambridge Five utilized their expertise to uncover and leak classified intelligence that significantly benefited the Soviet Union.
The group included Kim Philby, an MI6 operative; Donald Maclean and Guy Burgess from the British Foreign Office (with Burgess later serving at the British Embassy in Washington, D.C.); Anthony Blunt, who acted as a liaison between MI5 and MI6; and John Cairncross, who worked at Bletchley Park during World War II and later held positions in various government departments.
Following the defection of Igor Gouzenko, a Soviet cipher clerk living in Canada, on September 5, 1945, intelligence agencies rigorously scrutinized their operations, leading to the eventual exposure of the Cambridge Five.
The daring activities of the Five have been depicted in twenty-four films, starting with Traitor in 1971 and most recently in A Spy among Friends in 2022.
9. Fair Game (2010)
The identity of CIA officer Valerie Plame was disclosed to Robert Novak, a columnist for the Chicago-Sun Times, who referred to her as “an agency operative” in his July 14, 2003, column for the Washington Post and other publications. Plame later detailed her experience in her memoir, Fair Game: My Life as a Spy, My Betrayal by the White House.
In his critique of the 2010 film Fair Game, Roger Ebert highlights that the Bush administration, in search of a pretext for war with Iraq, “latched onto claims that Niger had sold uranium to Iraq.” Joseph Wilson, a former ambassador to Niger, was sent to investigate but found no evidence supporting these claims, concluding that such transactions were “physically impossible.” Despite this, the U.S. proceeded with the war. When Wilson published his findings in the New York Times, his wife Valerie Plame’s CIA identity was leaked to Novak in an attempt to undermine Wilson’s credibility.
Ebert notes that, despite ongoing political debates about the reasons for the U.S.-Iraq war, Fair Game “uses real names and numerous facts to assert: (1) Saddam Hussein possessed no WMDs; (2) the CIA was aware of this; (3) the White House also knew; (4) the agenda of Cheney and his neoconservative allies demanded an invasion of Iraq regardless; and (5) consequently, the evidence was disregarded, leading to a war based on fabricated claims.”
8. The Fifth Estate (2013)
The Fifth Estate, inspired by Daniel Domscheit-Berg’s 2011 book Inside WikiLeaks: My Time with Julian Assange at the World’s Most Dangerous Website, uncovers leaked intelligence disclosed by WikiLeaks: “Swiss bank corruption! Kenyan police death squads! Identities of British National Party neo-Nazis! A video exposing the murder of two Reuters journalists by U.S. troops in Iraq! … Published war logs from Iraq and Afghanistan, alongside 250,000 U.S. diplomatic cables.”
Entertainment Weekly’s critique of the film, which does not portray Assange as a hero, also poses a thought-provoking question: “At what point does the unchecked dissemination of information start to undermine the very ideals it aims to protect?”
7. Snowden (2016)
Drawing from Luke Harding’s The Snowden Files (2014), Anatoly Kucherena’s Time of the Octopus (2015), and multiple meetings in Russia between director Oliver Stone and Edward Snowden, the 2016 film Snowden delves into Snowden’s journey as a whistleblower.
Additional surveillance efforts included intercepting phone calls of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, monitoring embassies and missions of France, Italy, Greece, Japan, South Korea, and India, and executing a “continent-wide surveillance program” across Latin America. Covert operations also amassed “nearly 200 million text messages daily worldwide.”
6. American Made (2017)
Adler Berriman “Barry” Seal, an American commercial pilot, transitioned into a prominent drug smuggler for the Medellín Cartel. After his conviction on smuggling charges, Seal turned informant for the Drug Enforcement Administration, providing testimony in several high-profile drug cases.
When questioned by the House Judiciary Committee about the source of information regarding Seal’s 1984 trip to Nicaragua to meet the cartel, DEA agent Ernst Jacobson pointed to the White House. Jacobson suggested Oliver North, a National Security Council deputy director, as the likely source. North denied the allegation, as did Washington Times reporter Edmond Jacoby, who had previously covered the drug smuggling. Jacoby instead identified a deceased staffer of U.S. Representative Dan Daniel as the leak’s origin.
“The idea that American Made offers a realistic portrayal of [Barry] Seal’s life is utterly absurd,” states Liam Gaughan, noting that certain aspects of the film, inspired by the American pilot’s life, are exaggerated, while others are entirely fictional.
While Tom Cruise’s depiction of Seal as a charismatic individual is true to life, the portrayal of Seal being on amicable terms with Central American drug lords is mostly fabricated. Although Seal was indeed married, “most aspects of [the couple’s] relationship,” Gaughan asserts, “were embellished for cinematic effect.” Despite these inaccuracies, the film incorporates enough factual content derived from leaked intelligence to provide a fascinating glimpse into the ties between the CIA and Seal’s illicit activities.
5. The Post (2017)
The Post dramatizes the dilemma faced by Washington Post publisher Katherine Graham and executive editor Ben Bradlee as they weigh whether to publish the Pentagon Papers, officially titled The History of U.S. Decision-Making in Vietnam, 1948-1968, which succinctly outlines the document’s contents. The classified Pentagon review was leaked by military analyst and whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, whose 1973 espionage trial ended with the charges being dismissed.
The New York Times had already garnered significant attention with its front-page coverage of the papers, highlighting revelations that the U.S. entered the war despite low chances of victory and that the administrations of Presidents Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson had “misled the public” about the depth of U.S. involvement in Vietnam.
Following the New York Times publishing three articles based on the classified material, the U.S. Department of Justice secured a restraining order to halt further publication. Despite this, other newspapers, including the Washington Post, continued to release articles. In June 1971, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled in favor of allowing the documents to be published.
The Post has faced criticism for overstating the role of Graham’s newspaper in revealing the Pentagon Papers’ critical assessments of U.S. leadership and wartime conduct, as the New York Times played a far more significant role in exposing governmental deceit and leadership failures. Nevertheless, Ebert argues that the film’s potentially melodramatic moments are redeemed by Steven Spielberg’s direction and the stellar performances of Meryl Streep and Tom Hanks.
4. Red Joan (2018)
Melita Norwood appears an improbable spy, yet, as Becky Little’s History article reveals, the secretary leaked nuclear secrets to the Soviet Union during World War II and the Cold War. Although Cambridge historian Professor Christopher Andrew uncovered her double life, Norwood showed no regret, stating, “under the same conditions, I would do it again.” Her leaks were driven by her aspiration to spread communism in Eastern Europe and her fear of unchecked nuclear power in the U.S. and Western Europe.
The sexism of her era aided her in avoiding detection: In the 1930s, “Mona Maund, one of MI5’s first female agents, flagged Norwood as a potential spy. However, a male superior dismissed her warning, believing women incapable of espionage.” Norwood, who passed away in 2005 at 93, avoided prosecution as the attorney general deemed it unsuitable.
The 2018 film Red Joan, inspired by Norwood’s espionage, received mixed reviews. According to Rotten Tomatoes’ Critics Consensus, the movie “takes a captivating real-life story and renders it in an inexplicably bland manner, squandering both the tale’s inherent intrigue and the exceptional talents of Judi Dench.”
3. Reality (2023)
Reality (2023) focuses on American intelligence specialist Reality Leigh Winner, who was arrested for leaking classified information about Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Inspired by Tina Satter’s 2019 play Is This a Room?, the film incorporates dialogue directly from Winner’s FBI interrogation.
A former U.S. Air Force translator working for the NSA in 2017, Winner printed a classified document and sent it to The Intercept, a news organization. The report detailed Russian military intelligence’s cyberattacks on local election officials and U.S. voting software prior to the 2016 election, which pitted Donald Trump against Hillary Clinton.
Winner admitted to feeling conflicted about her actions. While she knew the document was classified, she also believed “the American people… were being misled.” In 2018, she was sentenced to five years and three months in prison, ultimately being “released from custody in November 2021 after time in a halfway house and under home confinement.” As TIME notes, “Public opinion on her actions remains split.”
2. The Courier (2021)
The Courier centers on MI6. As Alex Palmer of Smithsonian Magazine describes, the film begins with businessman Greville Wynne, recruited by MI6 agent Dickie Franks, meeting Soviet Union GRU Lieutenant Colonel Oleg Penkovsky under the guise of discussing “opportunities with foreigners in science and technology.” Their subsequent meetings, Palmer notes, yielded “a wealth of leaked material that influenced the Cuban Missile Crisis and ultimately led to both men’s imprisonment.”
However, screenwriter Tom O’Connor discovered numerous fabrications while researching Wynne’s story. Relying on additional sources, O’Connor crafted as accurate a portrayal of the covert operation as possible, though he cautioned that The Courier is not a documentary and the full truth about Wynne’s espionage may remain elusive.
1. Official Secrets (2019)
Official Secrets, inspired by whistleblower Katharine Gun, uncovers astonishing intelligence leaks. Gun, a translator at Britain’s Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), received an email requesting her assistance in gathering “compromising personal information” on UN representatives from six smaller nations to coerce them into supporting the Iraq War. As reported in a Guardian article, the memo targeted Angola, Cameroon, Chile, Bulgaria, Guinea, and Pakistan, with Pakistan receiving particular attention.
Outraged by the directive, Gun printed the memorandum, which later surfaced in The Observer. Her decision to expose the GCHQ’s actions led to charges under the Official Secrets Act of 1989, though the charges were mysteriously dropped without explanation.
