The Best American Political Thrillers: ‘Blow Out,’ ‘Argo,’ ‘Reality,’ and More

‘The Manchurian Candidate’ (1962)

‘Raymond Shaw is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I’ve ever known in my life.’ Why is it that all the ex-GIs who served with Shaw, a Korean War hero, finds it necessary to say that about him? And that they go into a trance-like state when they do? This tale of brainwashing and gaslighting centers on the political ambitions of Shaw’s parents: his father, a Senator in the mold of Joe McCarthy who peddles fierce anti-communist sentiment in a bid to be the running-mate to his party’s next presidential nominee, and his wife (Angela Lansbury), an actual communist agent who uses her husband’s bluster as the perfect shield. ‘The Manchurian Candidate’ is invoked a lot these days to refer to a foreign power’s influence over a presidential candidate – but its most powerful insight may be in its depiction of the gaslighting Lansbury’s character engages in: the idea that she projects onto her opponents everything vile that she does herself. —CB

‘The Parallax View’ (1974)

Initially received with largely negative reviews, ‘The Parallax View’ has since been reevaluated as a classic mid ‘70s political thriller, and rightfully so. Inspired but not directly based on the assassination of John Kenndy, Alan J. Pakula’s film focuses on TV reporter Joe Frady (Warren Beatty), who witnesses the assassination of US senator Charles Caroll (William Joyce) during a presidential campaign stop. Three years later, his ex-girlfriend gets killed after claiming to have seen a second gunman, and Frady ends up investigating, infiltrating the security firm The Parallax Corporation in the process. The film’s convoluted conspiracy plot is silly but thrilling, and Beatty gives a committed performance that stands among the genre’s very best. —WC

‘The Conversation’ (1974)

You know you’re doing something right as a filmmaker when you win the Palme d’Or for the second biggest film you released that year. While ‘The Godfather Part II’ will always be remembered as the quintessential Francis Ford Coppola masterpiece from 1974, ‘The Conversation’ can stand on its own as one of the auteur’s best works. Gene Hackman stars as Henry Caul, an elite wiretapper whose ability to invade other people’s privacy forces him to live in constant paranoia about his own. Coppola puts on a master class in directing thrillers, infusing the story with endless amounts of tension despite so much of it unfolding in audio form. The moral dilemma that Caul ultimately faces turns the film into a character study that can hang with the best New Hollywood stories. —CZ

‘Chinatown’ (1974)

Roman Polanski may be as classically disgraced as a filmmaker gets these days, but ‘Chinatown’ remains a gem of Los Angeles-set filmography with one of Jack Nicholson’s all-time best performances. Local corruption plagues California’s water system in 1937 when the body of a potential whistleblower is found floating in a reservoir. It’s a dramatization of the real California water wars, that would’ve set up a trilogy for Nicholson’s memorable P.I. character — if 1990’s ‘The Two Jakes’ hadn’t been so late and lackluster. —AF

‘Three Days of the Condor’ (1975)

Sydney Pollack’s ‘Three Days of the Condor’ was based on James Grady’s novel of almost the same name (‘Six Days of the Condor,’ not three), which released the previous year, but the film came out during a much more charged time for the CIA, with various congressional investigations into alleged abuses from the organization occurring during its theatrical run. That gave the film a bit more added heft at the time, but the film remains a crackerjack and smart thriller today. Robert Redford leads the cast as a mild-mannered CIA researcher with the codename Condor, who’s forced to go on the run when a hit squad murders everyone else in his office. At first relying on his CIA handlers to help him survive, Condor begins to worry that he’s being set up by the agency itself, and the film leaves the audience guessing on who the real bad guy is until the very end. —WC

‘Marathon Man’ (1976)

John Schlesinger’s pulsing thriller is best known for the alleged disagreements between stars Dustin Hoffman and Laurence Olivier, but it remains an exhilarating watch several decades later. Hoffman is the titular marathon man Babe, a graduate student and runner whose father was a victim of McCarthy-era anti-communism. When the film starts, he’s totally unaware that his brother Doc (Roy Scheider) is a government spy working as the handler on Nazi war criminal Christian Szell (Olivier). But when Doc ends up murdered, Babe is unable to trust anyone as he’s plunged into a twisted conspiracy.

The wildly different performances of the two leads are key to ‘Marathon Man’ and its success: Hoffman goes full method to embody Babe’s deteriorating sanity and paranoia, while Olivier cuts a menacing figure in the antagonistic role. —WC

‘All the President’s Men’ (1976)

The soft glow of Deep Throat’s cigarette in a shadowy garage; Ben Bradlee’s (Jason Robards) ‘Okay we go with it’ order to Bob Woodward (Robert Redford) and Carl Bernstein (Dustin Hoffman) as his elevator doors lightly close in front of him; the rat-tat-tat patter of a typewriter announcing the President’s resignation. There are so many images and sounds that stick with you from Alan J. Pakula’s adaptation of Bernstein and Woodward’s book about the events that led to the end of the Nixon presidency. But it’s to Pakula’s credit that they all feel a natural part of telling the story of the 20th Century’s biggest American political scandal – there’s no unnecessary adornment to his craft, as if Pakula himself, like the best of journalists, believed that clarity and precision are the highest virtues. ‘All the President’s Men’ is the standard to which all subsequent depictions of investigative newspapers journalism aspire to, from ‘Spotlight’ to ‘The Post.’ —CB

‘Capricorn One’ (1977)

Political thrillers have endured as a genre in part because they’re so well equipped to capture the paranoias of their times. Even the weaker ones serve as useful documents of whatever Americans happened to be freaking out about in a given year. ‘Capricorn One’ is fascinating because it came out in 1977, a time when the notion that America had faked the moon landing was still a novel idea. As that particular conspiracy theory was beginning to take root on the American fringes, Peter Hyams’ sci-fi thriller imagined a world where a new Mars landing was faked to avoid NASA losing funding. The film allows the ridiculous story to unfold with real political drama, and a great performance from Hal Holbrook goes a long way towards humanizing these conspiracy participants and make their motives seem borderline believable. —CZ

‘Blow Out’ (1981)

Brian De Palma outdid himself in ‘Blow Out,’ a darkly brilliant thriller interwoven with enough genre send-ups to almost call it a horror comedy essential. Starring John Travolta as Jack, ‘Blow Out’ follows an audio engineer who uncovers an assassination plot while editing the sound for a new slasher. De Palma’s primary influence for the film is Michelangelo Antonioni’s ‘Blow-Up’ (1966), the plot of which directly inspired the government conspiracy Jack unravels. But visually, it’s Alfred Hitchcock through and through, with De Palma and cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond delivering stunning deep focus shots cheekily evocative of ‘Psycho.’ This includes a gorgeous moment with Travolta and co-star Nancy Allen against a backdrop of fireworks, as dazzling as it is dystopian. Brace yourself for the ending on this one. —AF

‘The Hunt For Red October’ (1990)

The last great Cold War-era thriller before the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, ‘The Hunt For Red October’ remains the best adaptation of Tom Clancy’s spy novels. Casting Alec Baldwin as the heroic agent Jack Ryan, as he’s tasked with investigating Soviet captain Marko Ramius (a terrific Sean Connery), who has appeared on the east coast of the U.S. with his virtually undetectable stealth submarine, the Red October. The actors and the deep supporting cast — including Scott Glenn, James Earl Jones, and Sam Neill — bring depth and shade to an old-fashioned and sturdy film that resembles many political thrillers you’ve seen before. But that’s not a bad thing because ‘The Hunt For Red October’ executes its twists and turns well enough to still exhilarate. —WC

‘No Way Out’ (1987)

A D.C. love triangle set against the Office of Naval Intelligence launched Kevin Costner into stardom. ‘No Way Out’ sees the Academy Award winner play a lieutenant commander-turned-CIA operative who unwittingly falls for a woman (Sean Young) also involved with his superior, the Secretary of Defense (a killer Gene Hackman). It’s a perfect blend of the political and personal, juicy but never juvenile, with Hackman and Costner perfectly embodying the very flawed, very human core of our democracy, until a last-act twist that changes everything before it. —AF

‘JFK’ (1991)

Even at the time of its release, ‘JFK’ was extremely controversial, particularly for its depiction of gay people and implication that the acquitted Clay Shaw was potentially involved in the assassination of the titular president. Time hasn’t exactly proven the film right; if anything, it’s full-throated embrace of conspiracy theories has aged like milk in the age of QAnon and insurrections. If you can ignore this admittedly glaring baggage, there’s a reason that Oliver Stone’s thriller received such critical acclaim and eight Oscar nominations; as a political thriller, it’s a winner, with brilliant directing, editing, and performances by Tommy Lee Jones as Shaw and Kevin Costner as investigator Jim Garrison elevating the deeply thorny subject matter. —WC

‘Absolute Power’ (1997)

Director/star Clint Eastwood puts down his western machismo to play a burglar who witnesses the death of a woman during a breaking-and-entering — and vows to bring her killers to justice — in “Absolute Power.” When a late-night tryst with a U.S. President (Gene Hackman) turns violent, his mistress (Melora Hardin) fights back and is gunned down by the Secret Service. —AF

‘Enemy of the State’ (1998)

Not particularly smart but consistently enjoyable, ‘Enemy of the State’ is pure political thriller as a summer blockbuster, featuring the ’90s biggest box office king, Will Smith, in the central role. He plays Robert Clayton Dean, a labor lawyer who winds up with an incriminating videotape of a congressional assassination in his hands. The corrupt NSA official (Jon Voight) responsible frames Dean for murder, forcing him on the run, as he attempts to unravel the conspiracy and prove his innocence.

‘Enemy of the State’ thrives thanks to Scott’s muscular direction and well-staged action sequences, as well as Smith’s great movie star turn. It also features a stellar late career turn from Gene Hackman, in a role that might as well be his ‘The Conversation’ character 30 years later. —WC

‘Minority Report’ (2002)

Steven Spielberg isn’t the first director you’d imagine for a Philip K. Dick adaptation, but the alchemy on this film is near perfection. There is no director alive who can more precisely and efficiently synthesize exposition, complicated action, and character by knowing exactly how to stage and shoot a scene.

That efficiency pays off in the film’s first 20 minutes, quickly establishing the depth and complexity of Dick’s world as we dive head first into the film’s story: a futuristic political thriller envisioning Washington, D.C. in 2054. ‘Minority Report’ features some of the Spielberg’s best action set pieces, inspired by the cars and future technology to come up with new tricks. Production designer Alex McDowell’s vision of a high-tech future is visionary without being inhuman, and the film achieves surprising depth in framing how the surveillance-versus-safety question applies to our post 9/11 world. —CO

‘Zero Dark Thirty’ (2012)

After winning an Oscar for ‘The Hurt Locker’ — arguably the definitive Iraq War movie — nobody would have blamed Kathryn Bigelow for pivoting to another genre to avoid comparisons to her masterpiece. Instead, she doubled down and took on one of the best known stories from America’s military involvement in the Middle East. ‘Zero Dark 30’ turns the manhunt for Osama Bin Laden into a Hollywood thriller, documenting the CIA’s meticulous preparation all the way through the legendary SEAL Team Six raid. Despite audiences knowing the outcome of the mission in advance, Bigelow’s skillful direction kept everyone on the edge of their seats until the fatal shot was fired. —CZ

‘Argo’ (2012)

‘Gone Baby Gone’ and ‘The Town’ demonstrated that Ben Affleck was serious about the craft of directing, but ‘Argo’ was the film that cemented him as one of his generation’s best filmmakers. Affleck stars in the thriller as Tony Mendez, the real-life CIA operative who extracted six hostages from Iran by disguising them as crew members for a fictional Hollywood movie. Bolstered by a stellar supporting cast that includes memorable turns from Alan Arkin and John Goodman, ‘Argo’ deftly blends film industry humor with white knuckle thrills to craft one of the most memorable political thrillers of the 21st century. Not only did it win the Oscar for Best Picture (despite Affleck’s infamous snub in the Best Director category), it has enjoyed more cultural staying power than virtually any other film to win the award in the past decade. —CZ

‘Reality’ (2023)

Political thrillers often get their power from reflecting real-world issues and corruption, but ‘Reality’ goes a step further by portraying a real-life event almost exactly as it happened. Tina Satter’s feature directorial debut is an adaptation of her play ‘Is This a Room?’ which itself was based on the real transcript of the FBI’s interrogation of NSA translator Reality Winner at her home in 2017. And the film adapts the transcript very literally: almost the entirety of the dialogue is taken directly from the original interrogation, creating a mounting sense of dread as Reality occupies herself with worrying about her cat and dog. Sydney Sweeney, playing the leaker with a name too strange to be fiction, delivers the best performance of her young career as an idealistic woman in over her head and crumbling in the face of a vengeful government. —WC