The Bus

After recently seeing The Constant Gardener, eagerly anticipating Syriana, and being happy about The Interpreter I've come to realize that I really like political thrillers, especially ones dealing with international issues.

Even the The Manchurian Candidate wasn't bad although American politics aren't as interesting to me.

What are your recommendations for great political thrillers? Note I am NOT talking about "political" movies, that thread is here: "Movie with the Most Dubious Political Agenda...".

I'm open to any and all recommendations.

GoldenJCJ

I liked the recent Val Kilmer flick Spartan

The Jack Ryan thrillers are all pretty good. (although, I'm not a huge fan of The Sum of All Fears) The Harrison Ford ones are pretty good. IMO Patriot Games being the best.

gryffinmaster

Hmm ... well, it is a slight step away in plot lines to be a "political" thriller, but I can recommend The Insider. Great roles form both Pacino and Crowe.

wendersfan

The Quiet American
The Spy Who Came In From the Cold
The Day of the Jackal

SiberianLlama

When you said you saw the The Manchurian Candidate, were you talking about the original or the remake? The remake was eh. The original is a classic.

Norm de Plume

Day of the Jackal is a masterpiece.
Illustrious Corpses by Francesco Rosi is magnificent (with the wonderful Lino Ventura), and Rosi's The Mattei Affair is very good as well.
Costa-Gavras's The Confession is a great film, much better, in my opinion, than his more prominent Z.
Schloendorff's Circle of Deceit is fantastic.
Sidney Lumet's The Deadly Affair is a gripping spy story.
A Knife in the Head is a fascinating film that deals with the tension between police and radicals in 1970s West Germany.
Confessions of a Police Captain is an excellent look at corrupt institutional practices in Italy.
Punishment Park, a stupendous U.S.-set allegory from the redoubtable Peter Watkins.
The Working Class Goes to Heaven, a great Italian picture by Elio Petri.
Nada by Claude Chabrol.
Night Flight from Moscow by Henri Verneuil.
No End by Krzyzstof Kieslowski.
Without Apparent Notice is not bad.
Melville's Army in the Shadows is fairly interesting.
Fatherland is a decent imagining of what would have happened had Hitler won.
Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion is passable.

eXcentris

Costa-Gavras pretty much invented the modern political film, at least in Europe. Before him, political films were either pseudo documentaries or propaganda films. He innovated by combining European intellectualism with the vigorous style of Hollywood action films. By using dynamic cinematography, editing, and music, as well as making it easier for the audience to relate to the characters, he redefined and helped popularize the genre. This approach wasn't exempt from a certain "good vs evil" reductionism but it certainly helped make the political film more accessible. 'Z', L'Aveu, and État de Siège are all well worth watching.

eXcentris

A few more off the top of my head:

The Battle of Algiers (French involvment in Algeria)
Queimada (aka Burn! A professional British mercenary instigates a slave revolt in the Caribbean islands)
Cry Freedom (apartheid in South Africa)
A Dry White Season (apartheid in South Africa)
Gandhi (more of a biopic but you can't deny the political significance)
Michael Collins (anout the man who led the IRA against British rule and founded the Irish Free State (Eire) in 1921.)
Reds (communist revolution in Russia)
Salvador (military dictatorship in El Salvador in 1980)
The Year of Living Dangerously (Sukarno's volatile Indonesia in 1965)
Sacco e Vanzetti (but that's American history)

Norm de Plume

I forgot to mention Battle of Algiers and its "sequel".

"Battle of Algiers" predated any of Costa-Gavras's political films (1965's Sleeping Car Murders is a thrilling mystery free of politics), and Rosi was arguably ahead of the others with his Salvatore Giuliano in 1962, but Gavras is probably Europe's most famous director of political Thrillers.

eXcentris

Correct but "Battle of Algiers" fits more into the pseudo documentary style which pre-dated the more "modern" Costa Gavras political films. I've seen "Salvatore Giuliano" but it's been so long ago that I honestly don't remember much about it.

Bateman

"Z" is the possibly the best I can think of off the top of my head. Two lesser knowns that were solid are "The Dancer Upstairs" and "Four Days in September."

DVD Josh

Here here.

The Bus

Of Manchurian Candidate I have not seen the original, but plan to. I found the remake competent in that it was more exciting than other similar mainstream fare. I've had The Battle of Algiers on my shelf, now I can move it to my to-watch list.

Spartan is another one I love. Thanks for the recommendations and keep the coming. For something that could be considered an established genre, it doesn't seem like there's many movies of that type, does it?

Matt925

I recently saw and enjoyed a korean movie called The President's Last Bang, about the 1979 assassination of the president of south korea. After the movie gets going it's very tense and it's very interesting to see how it was carried out (according to the movie) and the power struggle that ensued.