Best movies like The Serpent
Last updated March 2024
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Plot Summary:
Vlassov is a Soviet spy who defects in France. He is whisked to the U.S, where Allan Davies takes over the case. After polygraph tests and cross-examinations, Vlassov names several Western European agents who are also spying for the Soviets. Davies wants to take the listed agents into custody; meanwhile, those on the list start dying under mysterious circumstances.
IMDB Rating: 6.2
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama, Thriller
Country: France, Italy, West Germany
Duration: 124 min
Plot tags: political thriller, psychological, serious, realistic, suspenseful, eurospy
Best tv shows and movies like The Serpent (1973):
Similar in 76%
Escape to Nowhere (1973)
Plot Summary:
Who is Anton Haliakov, who has just been abducted by the M.I.5 in London? A Soviet scientist apparently. But sixteen years before the man had another identity, Clément Tibère, and another nationality, French. So what led him to become Russian and to change identity? And why are the British secret services interested in him?.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama, Thriller
Country: France, Italy
Duration: 117 min
Plot tags: exciting, rough, serious, realistic, suspenseful, eurospy
Similar in 83%
The Listening (2006)
Plot Summary:
Estranged by the degree of corporate influence within the largest U.S. listening station in the world, an aging NSA officer defects and mounts a clandestine counter-listening station high in the Italian alps.
IMDB Rating: 6.2
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Crime, Drama, Thriller
Country: Italy
Duration: 105 min
Plot tags: tense, rough, serious, realistic, suspenseful, independent film
Similar in 84%
The Tamarind Seed (1974)
Plot Summary:
During a Caribbean holiday, a British civil servant finds herself falling in love with a Russian agent.
IMDB Rating: 6.4
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama, Romance, Thriller
Country: UK, USA
Duration: 125 min
Plot tags: romantic, independent film, serious, realistic, microfilm
Similar in 85%
The MacKintosh Man (1973)
Plot Summary:
A member of British Intelligence assumes a fictitious criminal identity and allows himself to be caught, imprisoned, and freed in order to infiltrate a spy organization and expose a traitor.
IMDB Rating: 6.3
IMDB Votes: 5000
Genere: Thriller
Country: UK, USA
Duration: 98 min
Plot tags: exciting, serious, suspenseful, tense, neo noir, political thriller, rough, realistic, stylized, fast
Similar in 78%
Bullet to Beijing (1995)
Plot Summary:
When long-time British agent Harry Palmer loses his job because the Cold War is over, he's promptly approached by a Russian bossman, Alex. In St. Petersburg Alex tells Harry of his plan for Russia's future, which is threatened because a deadly biochemical weapon called the Red Death has been stolen from him. He'll pay Harry handsomely to retrieve it. An ex-spy friend tips Harry off that it's being sent to Beijing by train, aboard which we begin to learn whose side everyone's really on.
IMDB Rating: 5.4
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Action, Thriller
Country: Canada, UK, USA, Russia
Duration: 101 min
Plot tags: serious, realistic, suspenseful, exciting, political thriller, cynical, fast, independent film, eurospy
Similar in 87%
The Double Man (1967)
Plot Summary:
In a complex piece of espionage the Russian secret service attempts to kidnap a high ranking officer in the CIA and replace him with a double of its own.
IMDB Rating: 5.9
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Mystery, Thriller
Country: UK
Duration: 105 min
Plot tags: retro, political thriller, grindhouse, exciting, serious, realistic, suspenseful, eurospy
Similar in 87%
A Few Days in September (2006)
Plot Summary:
1 September 2001. Elliot, an American C.I.A. agent holding top secret information on the immediate future of the world, disappears. His sole aim was to meet his daughter Orlando, whom he abandoned ten years before. Irène, a French agent who used to work with him, and David, his adoptive son, will help him and lead the girl to her father. Chased by William Pound, a strangely poetic psycho, they will defy the dangers of international espionage from Paris to Venice and finally get to Elliot on 11 September 2001.
IMDB Rating: 5.2
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama, Thriller
Country: Italy, France, Portugal
Duration: 116 min
Plot tags: realistic, suspenseful, serious, political thriller, tense
Similar in 86%
The Patriots (1994)
Plot Summary:
Ariel, un jeune Juif français, décide de quitter sa famille pour partir en Israël et devenir un agent du Mossad, les services secrets israéliens. En participant à des missions à Paris, Tel Aviv et Washington, il sera initié à l'art délicat de la manipulation.
IMDB Rating: 7.3
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama, Thriller
Country: France
Duration: 138 min
Plot tags: serious, realistic, suspenseful
Similar in 77%
Aldrich Ames: Traitor Within (1998)
Plot Summary:
Fact-based story about a 90's espionage case that was chronicled as the worst case of espionage in US history.
IMDB Rating: 6.3
IMDB Votes: 360
Genere: Drama, Thriller
Country: USA
Duration: 100 min
Plot tags: exciting, serious, realistic, suspenseful
Similar in 88%
The Kremlin Letter (1970)
Plot Summary:
A network of older spies from the West recruits a young intelligence officer with a photographic memory to accompany them on a mission inside Russia. They must recover a letter written by the CIA that promises American assistance to Russia if China gets the atomic bomb.
IMDB Rating: 6.2
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Crime, Drama, Thriller
Country: USA
Duration: 120 min
Plot tags: neo noir, political thriller, visually stunning, tense, serious, realistic, suspenseful
Similar in 86%
The Defector (1966)
Plot Summary:
Professor Bower, an American physicist, is effectively blackmailed by a shady CIA agent named Adams to help the CIA obtain secret microfilm from a defecting Russian scientist. The reluctant Bower travels to East Germany undercover as an antiques collector where he encounters Heinzmann, an East German fellow physicist, who is also a secret agent. Heinzmann is aware of Bower's meeting with Adams and his intention to steal the microfilm, however their mutual respect for one another's tactics complicate the proceedings.
IMDB Rating: 5.7
IMDB Votes: 804
Genere: Drama, Thriller
Country: France, West Germany
Duration: 100 min
Plot tags: exciting, rough, serious, realistic, suspenseful, eurospy, microfilm
Similar in 81%
Billion Dollar Brain (1967)
Plot Summary:
A former British spy stumbles into in a plot to overthrow Communism with the help of a supercomputer. But who is working for whom?.
IMDB Rating: 5.9
IMDB Votes: 6000
Genere: Crime, Drama, Thriller
Country: UK
Duration: 111 min
Plot tags: political thriller, psychotronic, suspense, serious, realistic, suspenseful, fast, surprise ending, eurospy, vintage
Similar in 82%
Danger Route (1967)
Plot Summary:
Jonas Wilde, a British secret agent licensed to kill, wants to resign from his murderous work, but his superiors pressure him into taking on a new assignment-the assassination of a defecting Soviet scientist. In the course of the dangerous mission, he discovers a mole has infiltrated British intelligence.
IMDB Rating: 5.5
IMDB Votes: 493
Genere: Action, Drama, Thriller
Country: UK
Duration: 92 min
Plot tags: political thriller, grindhouse, exciting, serious, realistic, suspenseful, psychotronic, freeze frame, eurospy
Similar in 81%
Triple Agent (2004)
Plot Summary:
The Popular Front wins elections, the Spanish Civil War begins, and Hitler and Stalin are manipulating and spying. The brilliant exile, Fiodor Voronin, a general at 20, is the deputy at the White Russian Military Union, probably slated to replace the aging Général Dobrinsky soon. Fiodor's Greek wife, Arsinoé, paints and stays away from politics, befriending Communist neighbors. Her health declines; the attentive Fiodor arranges care and, against the backdrop of Stalin's Great Purge, considers his options. He plays a chess game in which love of country, love of Arsinoé, ideology, petty jealousies, and the machinations of power roil in matters of life and death.
IMDB Rating: 6.4
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama, Thriller
Country: France, Italy, Spain, Greece, Russia
Duration: 115 min
Plot tags: serious, realistic, suspense, enigmatic, psychological
Similar in 80%
Möbius (2013)
Plot Summary:
An FSB officer fall in love with his agent, an American woman who works as a trader in a Russian bank.
IMDB Rating: 6.1
IMDB Votes: 6000
Genere: Drama, Thriller
Country: France, Belgium, Luxembourg
Duration: 103 min
Plot tags: tense, serious, realistic, suspenseful, political thriller, stylized
Similar in 87%
Funeral in Berlin (1966)
Plot Summary:
Colonel Stok, a Soviet intelligence officer responsible for security at the Berlin Wall, appears to want to defect but the evidence is contradictory. Stok wants the British to handle his defection and asks for one of their agents, Harry Palmer, to smuggle him out of East Germany.
IMDB Rating: 6.8
IMDB Votes: 8000
Genere: Thriller
Country: UK
Duration: 102 min
Plot tags: political thriller, suspenseful, visually stunning, serious, realistic, psychotronic, psychological, exciting, tense, parody
Similar in 88%
The Jigsaw Man (1983)
Plot Summary:
Philip Kimberly, the former head of the British Secret Service who defected to Russia, is given plastic surgery and sent back to Britain by the KGB to retrieve some vital documents. With the documents in hand, he instead plays off MI6 and the KGB against each other.
IMDB Rating: 5.1
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Thriller
Country: UK
Duration: 94 min
Plot tags: political thriller, serious, realistic, suspenseful, independent film
Similar in 78%
The Quiller Memorandum (1966)
Plot Summary:
Two British agents are murdered by a mysterious Neonazi organization in West Berlin. The British Secret Service sends agent Quiller to investigate. Soon Quiller is confronted with Neonazi chief "Oktober" and involved in a dangerous game where each side tries to find out the enemy's headquarters at any price.
IMDB Rating: 6.3
IMDB Votes: 4000
Genere: Crime, Drama, Mystery, Thriller
Country: UK
Duration: 104 min
Plot tags: neo noir, political thriller, independent film, exciting, serious, realistic, suspenseful, stylized, eurospy
Similar in 90%
Spy(ies) (2009)
Plot Summary:
Vincent is a bright young man but has introverted personality. He is working as a baggage handler at an airport and refuses to follow a career path accordingly to his education. With his colleague, Gerard, Vincent used to steal objects from the luggage in the hold before shipment. As he opens a diplomatic baggage, Gerard provokes an explosion and dies.
IMDB Rating: 5.9
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama, Romance, Thriller
Country: France, UK
Duration: 99 min
Plot tags: sentimental, realistic, suspenseful, serious, psychological, bleak
Similar in 86%
The Secret Agent (1996)
Plot Summary:
London of the late 19th century is a haven for political exiles of all sorts - refugees, partisans, anarchists. Verloc has made his living spying for the Russian goverment, an agent provacateur of sorts, while simultaneously providing information to the London police, specifically Chief Inspector Heat. When the new Russian ambassador demands he prove his worth or lose his salary, Verloc sets off a tragic chain of events that involves his pretty young wife Winnie, her retarded brother Stevie, and a figure called the Professor, whose fascination with explosives and destruction makes him the person to call on when Verloc needs a bomb.
IMDB Rating: 5.6
IMDB Votes: 3000
Genere: Drama, Thriller
Country: UK
Duration: 95 min
Plot tags: psychological, harsh, realistic, suspenseful, tense, serious, political thriller, bleak, light, romantic
Similar in 87%
Legacy (2013)
Plot Summary:
Set in the 1970s London during the height of the Cold War when a young spy discovers the disturbing truth about his father's complex past. Based on Alan Judd's 2001 novel Legacy, the second in the Thoroughgood series after 1981's A Breed Of Heroes (adapted by the BBC in 1994). As the three day week, petrol rationing and industrial strife plunge Britain into a state of emergency, MI6 trainee spy Charles Thoroughgood is asked to reconnect with an old university friend, Russian diplomat Viktor Koslov, with a view to 'turning' him. Viktor has his own agenda, though, and reveals a shocking truth about Charles's own family that threatens to derail him, both personally and professionally. He is catapulted into a dangerous personal odyssey to uncover the truth but finds himself drawn into a lethal KGB plot to mount an attack within the UK. His life is further complicated by a relationship with the wife of another agent, which forces him to realise that betrayal can take many forms.
IMDB Rating: 5.7
IMDB Votes: 461
Genere: Drama, Mystery, Thriller
Country: UK
Duration: 90 min
Plot tags: serious, captivating, tense, realistic, suspenseful
Similar in 76%
Farewell (2009)
Plot Summary:
Engaging, emotional and riveting, FAREWELL is an intricate and highly intelligent thriller pulled from the pages of history— about an ordinary man thrust into the biggest theft of Soviet information of the Cold War. Ronald Reagan called this piece of history - largely unknown until now - “one of the most important espionage cases of the 20th century.” FAREWELL begins in 1981, after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. A French businessman based in Moscow, Pierre Froment, (Guillaume Canet) makes an unlikely connection with Grigoriev (Emir Kusturica), a senior KGB officer disenchanted with what the Communist ideal has become under Brezhnev. Grigoriev begins passing Froment highly sensitive information about the Soviet spy network in the US.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 7000
Genere: Drama, Romance, Thriller
Country: France
Duration: 113 min
Plot tags: tense, serious, realistic, suspenseful, political, sincere
Similar in 79%
Fail-Safe (1964)
Plot Summary:
Because of a technical defect an American bomber team mistakenly orders the destruction of Moscow. The President of the United States has but little time to prevent an atomic catastrophe from occurring. Director Sidney Lumet gives an atmospheric vision of the future with a Cold War backdrop.
IMDB Rating: 8.0
IMDB Votes: 24000
Genere: Drama, Thriller
Country: USA
Duration: 112 min
Plot tags: tense, political thriller, political, realistic, bleak, black and white, emotional, suspense, serious, suspenseful
Similar in 80%
Enigma (1982)
Plot Summary:
Five highly-trained KGB agents are sent to the west to assassinate several Soviet dissidents. In order to stop the diabolical plot, an American agent must infiltrate Soviet intelligence and obtain information from a Russian computer.
IMDB Rating: 5.9
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama, Thriller
Country: UK, France
Duration: 122 min
Plot tags: suspenseful, intense, serious, realistic, political, political thriller, independent film, exciting, romantic, atmospheric
Similar in 82%
The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1965)
Plot Summary:
British agent Alec Leamas refuses to come in from the cold war during the 1960s, choosing to face another mission, which may prove to be his final one.
IMDB Rating: 7.5
IMDB Votes: 18000
Genere: Drama, Thriller
Country: UK
Duration: 112 min
Plot tags: political, black and white, suspense, grim, clever, bleak, realistic, talky, political thriller, retro
Similar in 81%
Page Eight (2011)
Plot Summary:
Page Eight is lovingly turned, with elegant writing, a flawless cast and a heartfelt message from writer/director David Hare about the danger zone where spies and politicians meet. The tension builds gently as we follow the fortunes of Johnny Worricker, a jazz-loving charmer who works high up at MI5 as an intelligence analyst. It’s a part made for Bill Nighy and he purrs out bon mots with a weary panache that women 20 years younger find irresistible. One such is his neighbour, Nancy Pierpan (Rachel Weisz), in a Battersea mansion block. The question for Johnny is whether her interest in him is genuine or hides something darker. As his boss (Michael Gambon) puts it: “Distrust is a terrible habit.” Questions of trust, honour and friendship rumble through the play. The characters exchange oblique repartee as a plot about a damning dossier unwinds. It’s not to be missed.
IMDB Rating: 6.8
IMDB Votes: 19000
Genere: Drama, Mystery, Thriller
Country: UK
Duration: 99 min
Plot tags: political thriller, tense, serious, realistic, political, captivating, psychological, exciting, sincere, suspense
Similar in 83%
The Executioner (1970)
Plot Summary:
A British intelligence agent must track down a fellow spy suspected of being a double agent.
IMDB Rating: 6.0
IMDB Votes: 450
Genere: Drama, Thriller
Country: UK
Duration: 107 min
Plot tags: exciting, rough, serious, realistic, suspenseful, talky, suspense, eurospy
Similar in 76%
Topaz (1969)
Plot Summary:
A French intelligence agent becomes embroiled in the Cold War politics first with uncovering the events leading up to the 1962 Cuban Missle Crisis, and then back to France to break up an international Russian spy ring.
IMDB Rating: 6.2
IMDB Votes: 19000
Genere: Drama, Thriller
Country: USA
Duration: 143 min
Plot tags: suspense, tense, suspenseful, psychological, political thriller, enigmatic, psychological thriller, exciting, retro, art house
Similar in 88%
The Ipcress File (1965)
Plot Summary:
This espionage thriller represents a landmark in spy movies introducing the sly, dry intelligence agent Harry Palmer. The story, centers on Palmer's investigation into British Intelligence security. He's soon enmeshed in a world of double-dealing, kidnap and murder and finds a traitor is operating at the heart of the secret service. Will the mysterious 'Ipcress File' reveal who the traitor is?.
IMDB Rating: 7.2
IMDB Votes: 17000
Genere: Drama, Thriller
Country: UK
Duration: 109 min
Plot tags: atmospheric, suspenseful, suspense, exciting, tense, enigmatic, clever, realistic, cynical, retro
Similar in 81%
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011)
Plot Summary:
In the bleak days of the Cold War, espionage veteran George Smiley is forced from semi-retirement to uncover a Soviet mole within his former colleagues at the heart of MI6.
IMDB Rating: 7.0
IMDB Votes: 210000
Genere: Drama, Mystery, Thriller
Country: UK, France, Germany, USA
Duration: 127 min
Plot tags: suspense, clever, tense, confusing, bleak, non-linear, atmospheric, thought provoking, period piece, political