Espionage/Spy movies available on 4K Blu-ray, ranked by transfer quality.
dir. Greg Mottola
An ordinary suburban couple finds it’s not easy keeping up with the Joneses – their impossibly gorgeous and ultra-sophisticated new neighbors – especially when they discover that Mr. and Mrs. “Jones” are covert operatives.
Imprint · 4K + Blu-ray
dir. Christopher McQuarrie
S-Tier Paramount 4K. The best MI film by most accounts. The 6-movie 4K set has been available for around USD per film, but a lot of people are holding out for the eventual 1-8 complete box. The individual steelbook re-releases in the matching silver and grey art came out in July, and the worry is that MI7 and MI8 won't match.
Paramount Pictures · 4K + Blu-ray
dir. John Glen
S-Tier Turbine 4K. Timothy Dalton's first Bond. The Turbine German release is the one collectors talk about.
Turbine · 4K + Blu-ray
dir. Renny Harlin
Samantha Caine is a small-town schoolteacher and mom with no memory of her life before washing up on a beach eight years ago. After a car accident and a violent home invasion trigger flashes of her past, she discovers she used to be a deadly CIA assassin. Teaming up with a wisecracking private investigator, Samantha must return to her old ways to take down the people who tried to erase her.
Arrow Video · 4K + Blu-ray
dir. Cate Shortland
Natasha Romanoff, also known as Black Widow, confronts the darker parts of her ledger when a dangerous conspiracy with ties to her past arises. Pursued by a force that will stop at nothing to bring her down, Natasha must deal with her history as a spy and the broken relationships left in her wake long before she became an Avenger.
dir. Martin Campbell
A-Tier MGM 4K. The first Daniel Craig Bond. Part of the Titans of Cult steelbook line.
MGM · 4K + Blu-ray
dir. Robert Clouse
A-Tier Warner Bros. 4K. Bruce Lee's most famous film. The steelbook pre-order went up alongside Blade Runner and V for Vendetta.
Warner Bros. · 4K + Blu-ray
dir. Terence Young
A-Tier Warner Bros. 4K. Connery as Bond in Istanbul. The Connery-era Bond 4Ks have been well received.
dir. Christopher Nolan
A-Tier Warner Bros. 4K. Nolan's dream heist from the first wave of 4K releases back in 2017. A collector's edition with new packaging was announced alongside Interstellar, which generated more excitement than the film itself at this point. The rotating hallway fight and the city-fold sequence are still strong demo material. If you own the original 4K, the disc inside the collector's edition is likely the same.
dir. David Kerr
Disaster strikes when a criminal mastermind reveals the identities of all active undercover agents in Britain. The secret service can now rely on only one man - Johnny English. Currently teaching at a minor prep school, Johnny springs back into action to find the mysterious hacker. For this mission to succeed, he’ll need all of his skills - what few he has - as the man with yesterday’s analogue methods faces off against tomorrow’s digital technology.
A-Tier Paramount 4K. The Final Reckoning wraps up the two-part story that started with Dead Reckoning. The steelbook art was called bland and lacking color, and a Polish exclusive briefly appeared before getting swapped for the US version. Mixed reception on the film itself, with people saying 45 minutes of great action was buried in two hours of exposition.
dir. Cary Joji Fukunaga
Bond has left active service and is enjoying a tranquil life in Jamaica. His peace is short-lived when his old friend Felix Leiter from the CIA turns up asking for help. The mission to rescue a kidnapped scientist turns out to be far more treacherous than expected, leading Bond onto the trail of a mysterious villain armed with dangerous new technology.
dir. Marc Forster
Betrayed by Vesper, the woman he loved, 007 fights the urge to make his latest mission personal. Pursuing his determination to uncover the truth, Bond and M interrogate Mr. White, who reveals that the organization that blackmailed Vesper is far more complex and dangerous than anyone had imagined.
dir. Robert Schwentke
Lionsgate 4K, 2-disc set. Goes on sale regularly at Best Buy and Amazon for around $10 USD. The transfer is fine for a mid-budget action comedy and the cast of Willis, Malkovich, Mirren, and Freeman makes it an easy catalog pickup.
dir. Sam Mendes
Collector Instagram is full of this one right now. The 4K transfer was already well-regarded and the steelbook packaging turns up in almost every Bond collection photo.
A-Tier 4K Spectre disc with the usual Sony Bond treatment. The opening Day of the Dead tracking shot benefits from the extra resolution, though some people have run into playback issues on older machines.
Sony A-Tier 4K. The steelbook is the version most people grabbed. Late-90s action cinematography that cleaned up nicely in the transfer, with Banderas in his prime and one of Catherine Zeta-Jones' first major roles.
Sony Pictures · 4K + Blu-ray
dir. Clint Eastwood
Kino Lorber B-Tier 4K, part of their Eastwood run with Two Mules for Sister Sara and Play Misty for Me. The alpine mountain photography does most of the work for a film that was middling even in 1975.
dir. Richard Franklin
C-Tier Vinegar Syndrome 4K. Kid spy thriller from 1984.
Vinegar Syndrome
dir. Doug Liman
D-Tier Universal 4K. An early 4K release that hasn't aged well. The Bourne series was shot on film with a lot of handheld, and the transfer doesn't do much with it.
Universal Pictures · Blu-ray
dir. James Cameron
D-Tier 4K that caused a lot of frustration. Someone sold theirs for a dollar and the photo went kind of viral. A comparison with a Spanish Blu-ray showed the bootleg had more skin texture in several shots. There are defenders, but the consensus leans negative.
Resen · Blu-ray
dir. Michael Polish
Two married spies caught in the crosshairs of an international intelligence network will stop at nothing to obtain a critical asset. Joe and Lara are agents living off the grid whose quiet retreat at a winter resort is blown to shreds when members of the old guard suspect the two may have joined an elite team of rogue spies, known as Alarum.
Signature Entertainment · 4K Ultra HD
dir. Simon West
Sam is a secret agent whose toughest mission to date is pleasing her bride-to-be best friend at a lavish destination wedding. When a team of mercenaries crashes the party and takes the guests hostage, Sam is thrown into a fight unlike any before — one where she can’t risk blowing her cover or ruining the big day. As she takes on the bad guys in a high-stakes battle disguised as a fairy-tale affair, she realizes the real threat might be closer than she thinks.
dir. Matthew Vaughn
The story of a super-secret spy organization that recruits an unrefined but promising street kid into the agency's ultra-competitive training program just as a global threat emerges from a twisted tech genius.
dir. Ang Lee
During World War II, a secret agent must seduce and assassinate an official who works for the Japanese puppet government in Shanghai.
Imprint · Limited Edition
dir. Stanley Tong Gwai-Lai
Arrow Video 4K. The most accessible of the Police Story sequels and the one that feels most like a Bond film. Arrow's presentation is clean.
Arrow Video · 4K Ultra HD
dir. Guy Hamilton
Tough Brooklyn street cop Sam Makin is unwillingly recruited as an assassin for a secret United States organization known as CURE, who fake his death and give him a new identity: Remo Williams. With his appearance surgically altered, Williams is trained to be a human killing machine by his aged, derisive and impassive Korean martial arts master Chiun.
Kino Lorber · 4K + Blu-ray
dir. Clyde Bruckman, Buster Keaton
During America’s Civil War, Union spies steal engineer Johnny Gray's beloved locomotive, 'The General'—with Johnnie's lady love aboard an attached boxcar—and he single-handedly must do all in his power to both get The General back and to rescue Annabelle.
Eureka Entertainment · Limited Edition
dir. Guy Ritchie
At the height of the Cold War, a mysterious criminal organization plans to use nuclear weapons and technology to upset the fragile balance of power between the United States and Soviet Union. CIA agent Napoleon Solo and KGB agent Illya Kuryakin are forced to put aside their hostilities and work together to stop the evildoers in their tracks. The duo's only lead is the daughter of a missing German scientist, whom they must find soon to prevent a global catastrophe.
Arrow Video · Limited Edition
