What To Watch
Go Undercover to Decode These 11 Spy Movies and Shows
Your mission: Get caught up in some high-stakes espionage.
By Erin Corbett and John DiLillo
April 15, 2025
11 Best Spy Movies and Shows on Netflix to Go Undercover For - Netflix Tudum
There are some jobs that just beg for the cinematic treatment: detectives, immortal warrior mercenaries, plumbers. You can add spies to that list; over the 100 or so years that we’ve been running moving images through a projector, many more hundreds of films and television series have featured the world-saving antics of secret agents. From James Bond and Jason Bourne to Jack Bauer and plenty of other operatives with different initials, spies have become a defining feature of Hollywood.
All that history means you’ve got quite a few different titles to choose from if you’re in the mood for a Spy Show Saturday (or Sunday, or really any of the other non-alliterative days of the week). Whether you’re in the mood for a hard-hitting action movie or a high-flying heist series, you’ve come to the right place. From spies who fight with their fists to those who use their wits to outsmart the enemy, we’ve got an option for everyone. Read on for a top-secret briefing on 11 spies you can chase down on Netflix. The countdown to pressing play starts … now.
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Back in Action
Having Jamie Foxx and Cameron Diaz for parents would be pretty cool. But you know what would be even better? Having the superstar duo for parents — and them being spies. Back in Action explores that exact premise as Foxx and Diaz portray Matt and Emily, a couple who gave up their lives as glamorous CIA spies to raise their kids.
However, Mom and Dad are dragged back into a world of guns, danger, and espionage when their cover is blown. This time around, Matt and Emily are taking a minivan — and their children — along for the ride, which also co-stars The Deliverance’s Glenn Close, Bloodline’s Kyle Chandler, and Ripley’s Andrew Scott. Back in Action is a spy movie the whole family can enjoy.
Black Doves
Spies, assassins, and a mysterious murder — what more could you want from a spy thriller? In Black Doves, Helen Webb (Keira Knightley) is a professional spy who’s spent the last 10 years collecting intel from her politician husband and secretly passing it along to the shadowy Black Doves organization. When Helen’s secret lover, Jason (Andrew Koji), is murdered, she turns to her old friend Sam Young (Ben Whishaw), an assassin who’s been out of the game for a while, to help her investigate Jason’s mysterious death. If a spy thriller wasn’t enticing enough on its own, this six-episode series is set in London over Christmastime.
The Gray Man
In The Gray Man, Ryan Gosling plays CIA agent Courtland “Court” Gentry (otherwise known as Sierra Six), a shadowy operative whose cover is blown when he discovers information he shouldn’t have. Soon, the deadly spy is on the run from his own government — and from a sadistic mercenary played by Chris Evans. Featuring an all-star cast that includes Billy Bob Thornton, Ana de Armas, Alfre Woodard, Jessica Henwick, Regé-Jean Page and Dhanush, The Gray Man trashes a plane, a bus and multiple European cities before it finally reaches its one-on-one finale. The Russo brothers, who previously directed the latter two Captain America and Avengers films, brought their chaotic action filmmaking back down to earth for this film: It’s more Winter Soldier than it is Infinity War.
Heart of Stone
At first glance, Rachel Stone (Gal Gadot) doesn’t seem like the type of figure to appear on this list: She’s an amateur tech who’s just joined a high-stakes MI6 team. But, as you’ll see when Heart of Stone arrives Aug. 11, there’s more to her than meets the eye — look a little closer and you’ll find a highly trained operative for the Charter, a mysterious group with its own world-saving motives. Using a high-tech algorithm called the Heart to predict and stop global crime, the Charter lurks under the surface of the world’s security network. All of that changes when the Heart comes under attack. Soon, Stone is forced to begin a globe-trotting adventure that will decide whether the algorithm’s power is used for good — or evil.
The Night Agent
No one wants a mole in their garden — or their government organization. In The Night Agent, — from The Shield creator Shawn Ryan — FBI agent Peter Sutherland is introduced to the secretive Night Action program. One phone call hurls him into a deadly conspiracy where he must use all his skills to survive. Along the way, Peter is joined by tech genius Rose Larkin (Luciane Buchanan), as he attempts to figure out who’s an ally, who’s an enemy, and who’s a traitor to the American government.
In Season 2, Peter goes even deeper down the deadly rabbit hole of Night Action as a member of the clandestine organization in his own right. Working as Night Agent will push Peter into a world where danger is everywhere and trust is in short supply.
Operation Mincemeat
Based on the true story of the British military operation that helped the Allies take Italy during World War II, Operation Mincemeat is both a spy story and a story about acting itself. In order to fool the Axis powers into believing that the Allies were planning an attack on Greece, British intelligence created falsified documents and planted them on a corpse that they carefully delivered into enemy hands. It’s a spy story that focuses on the unreality of the profession — a secret world that, in Operation Mincemeat, also puts on a show of its own. In the film, Colin Firth, Matthew Macfadyen and Kelly Macdonald play the most prominent operatives. But keep an eye out for musician and actor Johnny Flynn, who pops up as James Bond creator Ian Fleming; before he became a published author, the budding writer played a part in the real-life Operation Mincemeat.
The Recruit
It seems like just yesterday that Noah Centineo graduated from high school in To All the Boys: Always and Forever. But in The Recruit he’s moved on to more adult concerns, like protecting one of America’s most important intelligence agencies. Centineo plays Owen Hendricks, a new CIA lawyer whose hunger for dangerous situations pushes him directly into the deadly realm of international espionage. Before he knows it, Owen is escaping from professional assassins, figuring out how to break into a Swiss bank, and playing power games with high-ranking foreign officials — all while simply trying to practice the law.
Owen’s tendency to jump into the deep end of even the murkiest situations takes him all around the globe. In Season 2, he must even crack the code of South Korean spy craft — and contend with the enigmatic intelligence officer Jang Kyun, played by BAFTA nominee Teo Yoo. Spy (lawyer), it’s time to meet Seoul.
Red Notice
In his post-wrestling years, Dwayne Johnson has made a career of playing lumbering agents of the law, including 21st-century cowboys like the Fast & Furious saga’s Luke Hobbs or Central Intelligence’s Bob Stone. In Red Notice, Johnson plays FBI agent John Hartley, an expert profiler who meets his match in a pair of notorious art thieves, played by a cunning Gal Gadot and a typically fast-talking Ryan Reynolds. To say any more would reveal too many of Red Notice’s twists and turns, but suffice to say a trio of bejeweled eggs are involved, and quite a few death-defying stunts ensue.
The Spy
You probably know Sacha Baron Cohen best as Borat, the bumbling Kazakh journalist who made “my wife” your uncle’s all-time favorite phrase. But Cohen isn’t just a prankster: He’s also acted in films and shows from Martin Scorsese’s Hugo to this 2019 French thriller series. Playing Eli Cohen, a spy for Israel’s Mossad, Cohen (no relation) infiltrates Syrian high society, becoming a close confidant of those in power. As the years stretch on, Cohen risks his life sending intelligence back to Israel, ultimately changing the course of the Six-Day War between the two countries. Based on a true story, The Spy is less explosive than some of the titles on this list; it’s far more focused on backroom dealings and the complex political goals of nation-states on the world stage. Cohen in particular received praise for his work on the series, channeling his chameleonic skills into a more dramatic role.
Treason
Daredevil star Charlie Cox plays an MI6 agent under fire in this 2022 British miniseries. As Adam Lawrence, second-in-command of the British secret service, Cox is hurled into a world of secrets and lies when his boss is poisoned and he’s planted in the driver’s seat of one of the world’s foremost intelligence agencies. Soon, Lawrence will have to choose a side in a growing international conflict — even as the truth of his past begins to loom in the rearview mirror. He deals with all that, along with the pressure of foiling government moles, negotiating tense abductions — and navigating a class full of grade-schoolers who want to know what being a spy is really like. Also starring Oona Chaplin, Olga Kurylenko, and Ciarán Hinds, Treason is a five-episode thrill ride created by Matt Charman, the Oscar-nominated co-screenwriter of Steven Spielberg’s own terrific spy flick Bridge of Spies.
The Union
Mike (Mark Wahlberg) is a construction worker from New Jersey who’s never left the tristate area, and his life is turned upside down when he runs into his high school sweetheart, Roxanne (Halle Berry). Only, this isn’t your average classmate reunion. Roxanne works for a top-secret government agency called The Union that trains blue-collar workers in tactical weaponry and combat intelligence to complete dangerous missions for the FBI and the CIA. Now, she’s returned to Jersey to recruit Mike for his help on a mission in Europe that might also bring the couple back together after 25 years.
Additional reporting by Ariana Romero.
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