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Best Central intelligence agency (cia) Movies

Ranked by how strongly each film carries the visual signature of central intelligence agency (cia) cinema — measured across 2,528 indexed frames from 26 films, against a 404,689-frame catalogue baseline. Not by box office, and not by vote.

Central intelligence agency (cia) films over-index on assault rifle, tactical vest and rifle — the objects that make the genre recognisable before a line is spoken.

  1. 1

    13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi (2016)

    Michael BayDP Dion BeebeIMDb 7.3TMDB 7.3See in full on FrameThrower →

    Libya, 2012. At an unofficial CIA base in Benghazi, a group of ex-military contractors are providing security. In the aftermath of Gaddafi's downfall, a power vacuum exists and the climate is volatile. Military weapons are freely available. The US Ambassador to Libya, Chris Stevens, makes a visit to the area, staying in a compound near the CIA base. On the night of 11 September, 2012, the Ambassador's compound is attacked by hordes of heavily armed locals; the only forces willing and able to defend it are six CIA contractors.

  2. 2

    12 Strong (2018)

    Nicolai FuglsigDP Rasmus VidebækIMDb 6.5TMDB 6.4See in full on FrameThrower →

    The True Story of the Army's Special Forces "Green Berets", who within weeks responded to the 9-11 attack. Green Berets, with the help of the 160th SOAR(A), took over the country and allowed other Special Forces and the rest of the conventional military to begin the more publicly visible war.

  3. 3

    Sicario (2015)

    Denis VilleneuveDP Roger DeakinsIMDb 7.7TMDB 7.4See in full on FrameThrower →

    Kate Macer leads a Phoenix based kidnap response unit for the FBI. Following Kate's team leading a raid on a known drug den in nearby Chandler, Kate is recruited to work on a special ops team led by Matt Graver of the CIA, he who is on special assignment for the Department of Defense. They recruited her because they wanted someone with tactical procedures knowledge. Outwardly, the team's mission, which works behind a Delta Force team as its primary gun power as required, is to decapitate a Mexican drug cartel by capturing or dismembering the workings of the main players, cartel head Manuel Díaz, his second in command Guillermo Díaz (Manuel's brother), and drug lord Fausto Alarcón. Kate agrees to the assignment as she feels the work of this team would be more effective in stopping the drug trade in the US than the piecemeal work of her current kidnap response unit. The third on the team is a mysterious Hispanic or Latino man Kate only knows as Alejandro, and who she does not fully trust as she can tell that he is suffering from a very traumatic past. When Kate and the team arrive in El Paso for their first mission, Kate learns that the team's workings are not all they appear on the surface - many of the proceedings which would not be considered above board or legal - despite the end goal being as she knows it to be. Still largely in the dark and only given information on a need to know basis, Kate decides to stick it out with the team if only to discover all that she is not told while still believing in the end goal. She may have changing or at least mixed emotions as she learns more and more about what is going on, including the specific reason why she was recruited.

  4. 4

    Salt (2010)

    Phillip NoyceDP Robert ElswitIMDb 6.5TMDB 6.4See in full on FrameThrower →

    Evelyn Salt is a CIA agent and highly respected by all, including her boss, Ted Winter. Out of the blue, a Russian spy walks into their offices and offers a vital piece of information: the President of Russia will be assassinated during his forthcoming visit to New York City to attend the funeral of the recently deceased U.S. Vice President. The name of the assassin: Evelyn Salt. Concerned about the safety of her husband, who she cannot contact, she goes on the run. Winter refuses to accept that she is a mole or a double agent but her actions begin to raise doubts. Just who is Evelyn Salt and what is she planning?

  5. 5

    Spy Game (2001)

    Tony ScottDP Dan MindelIMDb 7.1TMDB 6.9See in full on FrameThrower →

    CIA operative Nathan Muir (Redford) is on the brink of retirement when he finds out that his protege Tom Bishop (Pitt) has been arrested in China for espionage. No stranger to the machinations of the CIA's top echelon, Muir hones all his skills and irreverent manner in order to find a way to free Bishop. As he embarks on his mission to free Bishop, Muir recalls how he recruited and trained the young rookie, at that time a sergeant in Vietnam, their turbulent times together as operatives and the woman who threatened their friendship.

  6. 6

    Che Part 2 (Guerrilla) (2008)

    Steven SoderberghDP Steven SoderberghIMDb 6.8TMDB 6.6See in full on FrameThrower →

    In 1965, Ernesto 'Che' Guevara resigns from his Cuban government posts to secretly make his latest attempt to spread the revolution in Bolivia. After arriving in La Paz, Bolivia late in 1966, by 1967, Che with several Cuban volunteers, have raised a small guerrilla army to take on the militarist Bolivian movement. However, Che must face grim realities about his few troops and supplies, his failing health, and a local population who largely does not share the idealistic aspirations of a foreign troublemaker. As the US supported Bolivian army prepares to defeat him, Che and his beleaguered force struggle against the increasingly hopeless odds.

  7. 7

    Apocalypse Now (1979)

    Francis Ford CoppolaDP Vittorio StoraroIMDb 8.4TMDB 8.3See in full on FrameThrower →

    It is the height of the war in Vietnam, and U.S. Army Captain Willard is sent by Colonel Lucas and a General to carry out a mission that, officially, 'does not exist - nor will it ever exist'. The mission: To seek out a mysterious Green Beret Colonel, Walter Kurtz, whose army has crossed the border into Cambodia and is conducting hit-and-run missions against the Viet Cong and NVA. The army believes Kurtz has gone completely insane and Willard's job is to eliminate him. Willard, sent up the Nung River on a U.S. Navy patrol boat, discovers that his target is one of the most decorated officers in the U.S. Army. His crew meets up with surfer-type Lt-Colonel Kilgore, head of a U.S Army helicopter cavalry group which eliminates a Viet Cong outpost to provide an entry point into the Nung River. After some hair-raising encounters, in which some of his crew are killed, Willard, Lance and Chef reach Colonel Kurtz's outpost, beyond the Do Lung Bridge. Now, after becoming prisoners of Kurtz, will Willard & the others be able to fulfill their mission?

  8. 8

    Zero Dark Thirty (2012)

    Kathryn BigelowDP Greig FraserIMDb 7.4TMDB 7.0See in full on FrameThrower →

    Maya is a CIA operative whose first experience is in the interrogation of prisoners following the Al Qaeda attacks against the U.S. on the 11th September 2001. She is a reluctant participant in extreme duress applied to the detainees, but believes that the truth may only be obtained through such tactics. For several years, she is single-minded in her pursuit of leads to uncover the whereabouts of Al Qaeda's leader, Osama Bin Laden. Finally, in 2011, it appears that her work will pay off, and a U.S. Navy SEAL team is sent to kill or capture Bin Laden. But only Maya is confident Bin Laden is where she says he is.

  9. 9

    Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit (2014)

    Kenneth BranaghDP Haris ZambarloukosIMDb 6.2TMDB 6.1See in full on FrameThrower →

    After the terrorist attacks on 9/11, Jack Ryan, studying at the London School of Economics, becomes a U.S. Marine fighting in Afghanistan, where his spine is critically injured when his helicopter is shot down. During the recovery, he meets Cathy Muller, the medical student helping him learn to walk again, and Thomas Harper, an official with the C.I.A. who recruits him. Ten years later, Ryan is working on Wall Street covertly for the C.I.A., looking for suspect financial transactions that would indicate terrorist activity. He discovers that trillions of dollars held by Russian organizations have disappeared, funds controlled by Viktor Cherevin. Ryan's employer conducts business with Cherevin, so when Ryan discovers certain accounts are inaccessible to him as an auditor, he has reason to visit Moscow and investigate. When investigating, he discovers a plot that is related to the 9/11 attacks. Now he has to figure out the what, where, and when.

  10. 10

    The Report (2019)

    Scott Z. BurnsDP Eigil BryldIMDb 7.2TMDB 7.0See in full on FrameThrower →

    THE REPORT is a thriller based on actual events. Idealistic staffer Daniel J. Jones (Adam Driver) is tasked by his boss Senator Dianne Feinstein (Annette Bening) to lead an investigation of the CIA's Detention and Interrogation Program created in the aftermath of 9/11. Jones' relentless pursuit of the truth leads to findings that uncover the lengths to which the nation's top intelligence agency went to destroy evidence, subvert the law, and hide a shocking secret from the American public. THE REPORT is written and directed by Scott Z. Burns, and the film also stars Jon Hamm, Sarah Goldberg, Michael C. Hall, Douglas Hodge, Fajer Kaisi, Ted Levine, Jennifer Morrison, Tim Blake Nelson, Linda Powell, Matthew Rhys, T. Ryder Smith, Corey Stoll, and Maura Tierney.

What central intelligence agency (cia) films are made of

How much more often each element appears in a central intelligence agency (cia) frame than in an average frame from the catalogue. A ratio, not a share — assault rifle is not in most frames, it is simply far more common here than anywhere else.

  • assault rifle16.7×
  • tactical vest11.8×
  • rifle6.5×
  • soldier5.8×
  • computer monitor3.3×
  • concrete wall3.1×
  • dress shirt3.1×
  • telephone2.3×

How central intelligence agency (cia) films are shot

Weaker signals than the objects above, and worth saying so: most dramatic genres skew dark and night-heavy, so these numbers separate central intelligence agency (cia) from the catalogue far more than they separate it from its neighbours.

  • 85%eye levelvs 69% baseline

What breaks the pattern

Three Days of the Condor (1975) is the least typical film here — it carries the least of what the rest of this list is made of. Which is either a failure of the genre label, or the most interesting film on the page.

Method

Every frame in the FrameThrower catalogue is tagged for shot size, lighting, time of day, camera angle, colour and the objects visible in it. This page aggregates those tags across 2,528 frames from 26 films carrying the central intelligence agency (cia) label, and compares each figure to the same measurement across the whole catalogue (404,689 frames). Films are ranked by how closely they match the theme’s over-indexed elements, weighted by how distinctive each element is; one film per series. Only films with at least 20 indexed frames and 500 TMDB votes are listed.

Machine-readable: /api/list/central-intelligence-agency-cia

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