Movies like To Skin a Spy (1966)
The best movies like To Skin a Spy (1966) are Chief of Station (2024), All the Old Knives (2022) and The Operative (2019). If To Skin a Spy hooked you with its thriller, these 30 similar films are what to watch next, and every pick says why it matches.
Quick picks
- Highest ratedNikita (1990)7.1/10 from 2,270 votes
- NewestExit Protocol (2025)Released 2025
- In FrenchScribe (2016)Also in French
Chief of Station (2024)
After learning that the death of his wife was not an accident, a former CIA Station Chief is forced back into the espionage underworld, teaming up with an adversary to unravel a conspiracy that challenges everything he thought he knew.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both thriller
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisAll the Old Knives (2022)
When the CIA discovers one of its agents leaked information that cost more than 100 people their lives, veteran operative Henry Pelham is assigned to root out the mole with his former lover and colleague Celia Harrison.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both thriller
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Operative (2019)
A young Western woman is recruited by the Mossad to go undercover in Tehran where she becomes entangled in a complex triangle with her handler and her subject.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both thriller
SnoozefestMovies like thisSniper: The Last Stand (2025)
To stop an arms dealer from unleashing a deadly superweapon, Ace sniper Brandon Beckett and Agent Zero are deployed to Costa Verde to lead a group of elite soldiers against an unrelenting militia. Taking an untested sniper under his wing, Beckett faces his newest challenge: giving orders instead of receiving them. With both time and ammo running low in a race to save humanity, the team must overcome all odds just to survive.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both thriller
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisKandahar (2023)
After his mission is exposed, an undercover CIA operative stuck deep in hostile territory in Afghanistan must fight his way out, alongside his Afghan translator, to an extraction point in Kandahar, all whilst avoiding elite enemy forces and foreign spies tasked with hunting them down.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both thriller
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisTelefon (1977)
Nicolai Dalchimski, a mad KGB agent steals a notebook full of names of "sleeping" undercover KGB agents sent to the U.S. in the 1950's. These agents got their assignments under hypnosis, so they can't remember their missions until they're told a line of a Robert Frost poem. Dalchimski flees to the U.S. and starts phoning these agents who perform sabotage acts against military targets.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both thriller
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisCanary Black (2024)
Top level CIA agent Avery Graves is blackmailed by terrorists into betraying her own country to save her kidnapped husband. Cut off from her team, she turns to her underworld contacts to survive and help locate the coveted intelligence that the kidnappers want.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both thriller
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisMalone (1987)
Erstwhile C.I.A. assassin Richard Malone hopes for a tranquil retirement in the placid Pacific Northwest, but what he gets is a rumble with a right-wing extremist plotting a secret revolution.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both thriller
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe November Man (2014)
An ex-CIA operative is brought back in on a very personal mission and finds himself pitted against his former pupil in a deadly game involving high level CIA officials and the Russian president-elect.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both thriller
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisTake Cover (2024)
A burned-out professional sniper finds himself trapped in an all-glass penthouse by a lethal competitor and must find a way to survive and escape with little to no cover between him and the killer.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both thriller
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisScribe (2016)
Two years after a burn-out, Duval is still unemployed. Contacted by an enigmatic businessman, he is offered a simple and well-paid job: transcribing telephone tapping. Duval accepts financially without questioning the purpose of the organization that employs him. Precipitated at the heart of a political plot, he must face the brutal mechanics of the underground world of the secret services.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both thriller
SnoozefestMovies like thisSpy Game (2001)
On the day of his retirement, a veteran CIA agent learns that his former protégé has been arrested in China, is sentenced to die the next morning in Beijing, and that the CIA is considering letting that happen to avoid an international scandal.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both thriller
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisKill 'em All 2 (2024)
Phillip and Suzanne are retired from the spy game, living peacefully off the grid. That's until their whereabouts are discovered by Vlad, the vengeful brother of their target from the first film.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both thriller
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisExit Protocol (2025)
An assassin whose specialty is killing other assassins trying to get out of the business decides to try to get out himself and must then team up with his former mark to escape the hired killers now gunning for them both.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both thriller
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisMea Culpa (2014)
Franck and Simon are both good cops. They work as partners. But their lives take a tailspin when Simon, driving drunk, causes a tragic car wreck. A few years later, out of the police, he is forced to take matters into his own hands when his family is in danger.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both thriller
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisDangerous (2021)
A reformed sociopath heads to a remote island after the death of his brother. Soon after his arrival, the island falls under siege from a deadly gang of mercenaries, and when he discovers their role in his brother’s demise, he sets out on a relentless quest for vengeance.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both thriller
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisSecrets of State (2008)
In France, terrorist groups and intelligence agencies battle in a merciless war everyday, in the name of radically opposed ideologies. Yet, terrorist and secret agents lead almost the same lives. Condemned to secrecy, these masters of manipulation follow the same methods. Alex and Al Barad are two of them. The former is the head of the D.G.S.E.'s (Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure, the French equivalent of the CIA or the MI6) counter-terrorism unit while the latter reigns over a terrorist network, and both fight using the most ruthless of weapons: human beings.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both thriller
SnoozefestMovies like thisOff the Grid (2025)
After a morally-bankrupt company tries to weaponize a brilliant scientist's revolutionary technology, he goes off the grid to safeguard humanity. When the company sends a strike force to find him, they make their biggest mistake of all – they weaponize the man they are trying to catch.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both thriller
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Gray Man (2022)
When a shadowy CIA agent uncovers damning agency secrets, he's hunted across the globe by a sociopathic rogue operative who's put a bounty on his head.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both thriller
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisNikita (1990)
A beautiful felon, sentenced to life in prison for the murder of a policeman, is given a second chance – as a secret political assassin controlled by the government.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both thriller
Worth the HypeMovies like thisOtley (1969)
A petty crook finds himself mistaken for a murderer and a secret agent.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both thriller
Embassy (1972)
A KGB assassin infiltrates the American embassy in Beirut in an attempt to eliminate a Russian defector being protected by the CIA.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both thriller
Vodka (2023)
Manuel Jiménez receives some clandestine wiretappings that he has to transcribe. Because of this, and almost without wanting to, he enters a kaleidoscopic plot that involves a group of people at a party, their later walkabouts around the city at night, and their relationship with the secrets hidden inside Vodka’s diary.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both thriller
Red Snow (1952)
An Eskimo Army Sergeant is sent to his Arctic tribal village to gather information about a mysterious unmarked black airplane which shadows military planes in northern Alaska and equally-mysterious flashings lighting up the sky from Siberia across the Bering Strait. He soon discovers Soviet espionage at work. Along the way he must also deal with an ice-floe evacuation, an air-ice rescue, a fight with a polar bear and marriage to his fiancee.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both thriller
Black Box Affair (1966)
An airplane crashes in Spain. The Russian as well as the Chinese government take care of the events because on board there was a "black box" containing precious and dangerous devices for the whole world.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both thriller
Operation Double Cross (1965)
In Barcelona, secret agent Antoine Donadieu thwarts the plans of a Nazi scientist.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both thriller
Alarum (2025)
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.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both thriller
SnoozefestMovies like thisRequiem for a Secret Agent (1966)
A veteran US Secret Service agent must thwart the covert conspiracy of an enemy spy network that threatens the world's safety.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both thriller
Trap for Seven Spies (1966)
After the end of World War II former SS Colonel Von Rittenau resides in a French castle with a group of New Nazis. Von Rittenau captures seven former Allied secret agents after he discovers their names in an old Gestapo archive and now wants his revenge on them.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both thriller
The Spy Who Went Into Hell (1965)
CIA agent Jeff Larson is sent to investigate suspicious activities at a U.S. base located in southern Spain. He discovers the base is being heavily monitored by the KGB via hidden cameras and moles within the base, and he must find a way to ferret the traitors out whilst avoiding discovery of his investigation.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both thriller
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Frequently asked questions
What are the best movies like To Skin a Spy?
The closest matches to To Skin a Spy are Chief of Station (2024), All the Old Knives (2022) and The Operative (2019). Below are 27 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after To Skin a Spy?
Start with Chief of Station (2024), the closest match to To Skin a Spy.
What is the highest-rated movie like To Skin a Spy?
Nikita (1990), rated 7.1/10 by 2,270 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like To Skin a Spy?
Exit Protocol (2025) is the most recent release on this list.
Are there French movies like To Skin a Spy?
Yes: Scribe (2016), Mea Culpa (2014) and Secrets of State (2008).
How are movies similar to To Skin a Spy chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside To Skin a Spy, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.