While real-world politics seem increasingly erratic and detached from the issues facing everyday people just trying to make a living, there’s always comfort to be found in the movies, specifically those that take politics and ratchet the tension up to eleven. Political thrillers, whether fictional or historical, mine the political landscape for high-stakes suspense and intrigue, featuring characters who fall all along the political or moral spectrum.
Spies, journalists, corrupt politicians and all sorts of revolutionaries feature in some of the best political thrillers that have been released in the last century. With 100 years of real-life events, such as the Cold War, Watergate, and post-9/11 paranoia to pull from, these political thrillers all touch a nerve and are firmly established among the best ever made. Of all the many thrillers made against the backdrop of political unrest in the preceding century, these ten are the best.
10
‘The Hunt for Red October’ (1990)
Based on the novel by Tom Clancy and set during the Cold War era, The Hunt for Red Octoberintroduced the character of Jack Ryan to audiences. Played for the first and only time by Alec Baldwin, Ryan finds himself amidst tensions between the U.S. and the Soviet Union escalating after a Russian submarine captain, played by Sean Connery, goes rogue. Deeply entrenched in the politics of the Cold War, which had only started to come to an end mere months before the film’s release, the film finds its tension in boardroom discussions and multiple scenes of submarine standoffs.
The Hunt for Red October was the third film in a row for John McTiernan to become a certified action classic, following Predatorand Die Hard, and it features the same level of economical storytelling and character-driven action that made both those previous films so effective. The palpable claustrophobia in the submarine sets has never been bettered in any subsequent film, though Crimson Tidecomes close. The casting is perfection, particularly Baldwin, who is still the best screen rendition of Ryan, with all apologies to Harrison Ford, Ben Affleck, Chris Pine, and John Krasinski.
9
‘JFK’ (1991)
Conspiracy theories, while now occupying some of the most inane and toxic sections of the internet, make for undeniable entertainment, and there are few historical events that have inspired as great a number of them as the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Everyone, from the mob to the CIA, has been implicated by those who considered tin foil as proper headwear, and director Oliver Stone leaves no wild avenue unexplored in his epic, visually dazzling thriller JFK. Kevin Costner plays Jim Garrison, the real-life attorney who investigated the assassination and who was the prime source for the film.
While many historians and analysts have essentially discredited Garrison’s theories and the film itself, that doesn’t make it any less of a thoroughly engrossing piece of political claptrap. JFK marked the beginning of Stone’s most experimental period, combining a dozen different kinds of film stock and aspect ratios to portray different time periods and to accurately recreate the notorious Zapruder film that captured the fatal shot that killed Kennedy. Just like real politics, JFK shouldn’t be taken too seriously and is best treated with a healthy amount of skepticism. It also makes for a great political thriller pairing with any combination of other Costner-starring films like the pulpy No Way Outor the underrated Cuban Missile Crisis drama Thirteen Days.
8
‘Zero Dark Thirty’ (2012)
Another historical film that has had some major challenges to its accuracy but is nonetheless a tense piece of thrilling filmmaking, Kathryn Bigelow‘s Zero Dark Thirtydramatizes the hunt, and ultimate killing, of Osama bin Laden while also providing a summation of one of the darkest chapters in American politics in the decade following 9/11. Starring Jessica Chastainas a composite character leading the charge in the pursuit of bin Laden, the film also uses her as an audience surrogate to provide a sort of emotional catharsis for the increasing disillusionment and fear that had dominated American discourse since the World Trade Center attack.
The film was, unsurprisingly, controversial upon its release, due to the aforementioned issues of historical inaccuracy as well as its questionable depiction of torture as an interrogation method. Bigelow and writer Mark Boal, as they did with their previous collaboration, The Hurt Locker, focus more on the emotional turmoil of the task of tracking down America’s greatest enemy and the always-present moral quandary of the ends justifying the means. The action, naturally, is sweat-inducing, particularly the climactic raid on bin Laden’s compound, done in near dark and intense quiet. It’s an intense antidote to the bombast found in more typical Hollywood action fare.
7
‘Three Days of the Condor’ (1975)
If there’s any decade of filmmaking most readily synonymous with political thrillers, it’s the ’70s. With the fallout of the Vietnam War, the Watergate scandal and a myriad of other moments of social upheaval, it was a time of great distrust that fueled a number of thrillers where the American government wasn’t exactly a paragon of righteousness. Setting aside how uncomfortably familiar all of that might seem to the current political climate, movies like Three Days of the Condordistill that paranoia into a taut and suspenseful thrill ride.
Starring the late, great movie star Robert Redford, it seesa low-level CIA analyst who finds his entire office massacred, getting thrown into a conspiracy that seems to reach up the chain of command and into bloody dealings in the Middle East. As directed by Sidney Pollack, Three Days of the Condor is expertly paced and executed, with a New York at Christmastime setting that provides a perfectly chilling incongruity to the political machinations of the plot. The cast around Redford is also excellent, with Faye Dunaway as an innocent woman who gets brought into the proceedings against her will and who has white-hot chemistry with him, and Max Von Sydow as a cold-blooded assassin.
6
‘The Day of the Jackal’ (1973)
A thriller as meticulous as the assassin at the center of its plot, The Day of the Jackalis based on the Fredrick Forsyth novel of the same, which has been adapted twice since but neither comes close to the white-knuckle perfection of Fred Zinneman‘s film. Following the titular Jackal, an assassin hired to kill the French president Charles de Gaulle, the film revels in the minutiae as it details every step of his procedure to complete his assignment.
Zinneman, a director who could cross genres with relative ease, brings his documentary background and social realist style to give the film the same urgency and increasing tension as in his Western masterpiece, High Noon. The climactic Liberation Day sequence makes great use of this documentary aesthetic through the use of handheld cameras that filmed the real Bastille Day military parade, capturing real reactions from spectators who were unaware they were part of a film shoot. Despite being over 50 years old, The Day of the Jackal holds up remarkably well and is just as tense a viewing experience now, providing such simple thrills that no increase in budget or technology could ever improve upon.
5
‘The Manchurian Candidate’ (1962)
Released during the Cold War when tensions between the U.S. and the Soviet Union were at a high due to the Cuban Missile Crisis, John Frankenheimer‘s The Manchurian Candidate, based on the novel by Richard Condon, plays on the fears and paranoia of communist brainwashing. After their Army platoon is taken captive during the Korean War, their sergeant is turned into a sleeper agent who is then manipulated after returning home by his handler mother in an effort to further the career of his politician father. Both engaging with and satirizing the communist fears that were prevalent in the United States at the time, specifically in the wake of McCarthyism, the film works on multiple levels and remains relevant.
Even with the Jonathan Demme-directed remake, which refocused the paranoia towards corporate influence in politics, the original remains the essential version. It benefits most from Frankenheimer’s neo-noir visuals, most pronounced in the nightmare sequences, as well as the central performances by Frank Sinatra, Laurence Harvey, and especially Angela Lansbury. The Manchurian Candidate is often cited as one of the most quintessential Cold War films, not only for its paranoid plot, but also for how it distinctly reflects the atmosphere of the year it was released.
4
‘Blow Out’ (1981)
From director Brian De Palma, this ’80s mystery thriller updates the premise from Michelangelo Antonioni‘s Blow-Up. While the original follows a photographer who discovers evidence of a murder in an enlarged photo, De Palma goes for a sound technician, played by John Travolta, who uncovers a political assassination from a recording. Naturally, he becomes ensnared in a tangled web of a conspiracy that also connects him with a sex worker played by Nancy Allen. Set in Philadelphia over the 4th of July weekend, and with De Palma’s typically Hitchcockian-inspired visuals, the film is a dark and piercing view of America’s underbelly.
Though the film was given high notices by several prominent critics, it was not a box office success. It has since gotten a major resurgence as a cult classic, thanks to several filmmakers, such as Quentin Tarantino, listing it as their favorite of De Palma’s. Travolta’s performance is also arguably his best, along with Allen’s terrific work, which fits as a companion to her performance in De Palma’s previous film, Dressed to Kill, and John Lithgow‘s menacing role as a violent assassin. Blow Outis one of the most stylish political thrillers ever made, and a good deal seedier than is typical of the genre.
3
‘Z’ (1969)
Inspired by the real-life murder of a Greek politician and the Greek military junta that was in power during the film’s production, Costa-Gavras‘ Zis an urgent political thriller with an anti-fascist message that, while highly specific to its setting and time period, is also more relevant than ever. As the militaristic government lies, intimidates and silences witnesses to deny the truth of an assassination, and with a magistrate and journalist devoted to uncovering the truth, the film is overtly political at a time when many citizens across the globe were becoming increasingly disillusioned with governmental control and were reeling from years of political assassinations.
The film is shot in a cinema-verite style, and its kinetic editing keeps the viewer constantly on edge as it barrels towards its bleak ending, where fascism ultimately prevails over the progressives. It’s a depressing ending that feels all too real in the ways it reflects history and presaged future events. The best political thrillers often serve as a warning alarm to the masses who watch them to be wary of fictional or historical events repeating in real life, and in this post-truth political landscape, Z should be studied closely.
2
‘The Conversation’ (1974)
In any other year, in any other career, The Conversationwould be considered a filmmaker’s undisputed masterpiece, but for the iconic Francis Ford Coppola, it was slightly overshadowed by The Godfather Part II, which was released the same year. While that epic is undeniable, The Conversation is not to be overlooked, as it is one of the most tense and paranoid political thrillers ever made. It stars Gene Hackman, in one of his most subdued roles, as surveillance expert Harry Caul, whose most recent assignment has him convinced that a murder is imminent.
Though the film was written years prior and made while revelations were still forthcoming, its parallels to the spying techniques revealed during the Watergate scandal made it incredibly relevant to audiences in 1974. The technology used may look primitive to today’s, but the pervasive presence of surveillance in daily American lives is certainly reflected in the film’s pessimistic ending, where Harry sits alone in his apartment, unsure if he is being watched at that very moment, but resigned nonetheless. The Conversation is a masterpiece on every level that is often overlooked by the fact that it’s sandwiched between two of the all-time best movies in American cinema, but it is every bit the accomplished a masterwork as those films are.
1
‘All the President’s Men’ (1976)
While The Conversation is only coincidentally related to Watergate, All the President’s Menis directly engaged with it, chronicling the investigative work of journalists Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, played by Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman, respectively, as they break the story for The Washington Post. The divide between that paper’s hard-nosed journalistic ethics as portrayed in the film and its current form, under the ownership of Jeff Bezos, is incredibly stark and serves all the more as a reminder of the importance of a free and independent press.
Detailing the investigation with minimal Hollywood embellishment, the film is a masterpiece of slow-burn tension and is the best of director Alan J. Pakula‘s paranoia trilogy, which also includes The Parallax Viewand Klute. It’s a smart, perfectly paced, authentic thriller that knows the power of its performances can serve as its narrative engine, as the two intrepid reporters pound the pavement in search of that increasingly rarest of American commodities: the truth. In the last 100 years, there has been no political thriller more urgent or perfect than All the President’s Men.
