Which Classic Spy Movie Tropes Are True Or False?

You’d have to be pretty gullible to believe everything you see in the cinema, so why are we so infatuated with the lives of spies? Ever since James Bond burst onto the scene in the 1960s, cinemagoers have lapped up the fantasy of the globetrotting, smooth-talking gentleman spy and this week’s DVD and Blu-ray release of ‘Spooks: The Greater Good’ is no different.

Starring “Fit” Kit Harrington of ‘Game of Thrones’ fame, ‘The Greater Good’ may be more grounded than most in the genre, but it’s still a wildly glamorous adventure that sees spies with cool haircuts and sharp suits exploring exotic locations, hooking up with equally hip looking spies.

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Before you rush out and apply for a job at MI5, former-spy Annie Machon (pictured below) has a word of warning: working for the secret services is nowhere near as cool or fun as the movies would have you believe.

“A lot of spy work can be very desk bound and it can be quite routine and regular,” the ex-MI5 agent explains. “However, if one of your operations goes live you’re working 24/7 and it becomes very intense.”

We caught up with the author of the explosive ‘Spies, Lies and Whistleblowers: MI5, MI6 and the Shayler Affair’ to find out which Hollywood spy tropes were true to life and which are totally fabricated for the movies, and we were surprised by what we learned.

Movie trope: All spies are good looking

From Sean Connery as James Bond to Angelina Jolie as Evelyn Salt (above), pretty much every movie spy you see on screen is drop-dead gorgeous, but Annie says this preconception is counter-intuitive.

“If you want to be out in the field as a mobile surveillance officer, they want someone who looks standard, average, not too tall, not too short, not too striking so that they can blend in and not be noticed.”

True or False? FALSE

Movie trope: Spies are always globetrotting

In ‘Spooks: The Greater Good’, Kit Harrington’s rogue agent Will Holloway is extracted from a field operation in Berlin and James Bond probably has enough air-miles to get him to Mars and back, business class, but the reality is you may never leave the country while working for the secret service.

“It depends on the posting you have,” explains Annie. “Some postings involve a lot more travel than others. Nowadays, if you have a family and don’t want to travel so much, you can opt for a posting that don’t offer that. But if you’ve got the freedom to do it, yes of course you can do that.”

True or False? FALSE

Movie trope: Spies date other spies

Spies are usually portrayed as young, free, and single sex maniacs who are desperate to start knocking boots as soon as they meet another spy of the opposite sex but it’s unfair to assume all spies are nymphomaniacs by default. However, Annie says spies do tend to stick to their own when it comes to relationships.

“You can’t talk about your daily life, your work frustrations, or successes or anything like that if you’re with someone as a partner outside of the agency. A lot of people in relationships find that it can put a stress on it which is why there are so many internal relationships between staff.”

True or False? TRUE

Movie trope: Spies have lots of cool gadgets

The entire ‘Mission: Impossible’ franchise is built on insanely cool gadgets and gizmos and although 3D-printed face masks may not be standard issue gear, Annie says every intelligence agency around the world relies on high-tech creations to stay ahead in the spying game. You can forget about being handed the keys to a tricked-out Aston Martin DB10 though, as Annie quips, “You’d be lucky to get a Ford!”

True or False? TRUE(ish)

Movie trope: All spies have a license to kill

Jason Bourne has been known to kill men with a well-thumbed paperback, while a character was famously dispatched with a deep fat fryer in the ‘Spooks’ TV series, but as you’d probably guess, most spies never have to resort to violence of any kind.

“The idea of running around with guns certainly wasn’t the reality that I experienced,” says Annie who quit MI5 in 1995, “but it became very glamourized from the James Bond films onwards. That’s become a very good recruiting manual for the spy agency.”

True or False: FALSE

Movie trope: Spies have multiple passports and identities to use

We’ve all seen the scene where the disavowed agent visits his safety deposit box to recover a series of international passports and a bundle of cash to go on the run, and it turns out that spies do really have multiple aliases to fall back on when working in the field.

“You get given different aliases and things like that,” says Annie, whose friends were even more impressed with her secret life than she was.

“It’s one of those strange moments in your career when you’re first given your first alias and you think “wow, this is real spy stuff” and everyone I knew - no matter how cool they pretended to be - just thought it was the most amazing thing.”

True or False? TRUE

Movie trope: Spycraft

One of our favourite location-spots in ‘Spooks: The Greater Good’ is the James Smith & Sons Umbrella Shop on New Oxford Street, just up the road from the Yahoo offices. Will Holloway visits it to pick up a secret intel drop from Harry Pearce and Annie says this sort of old-fashioned “spycraft” – a term first coined by author John Le Carre – is enjoying a renaissance in the business.

“This was a Cold War rule because you want to avoid any electronic communication that can be picked up remotely. We know that now post-Edward Snowden, but spies have always known this from the 1950s onwards.

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“There are certainly places in any major city where these are happening right now. A number of the intelligence agencies around the world are going back to this sort of old non-electronic ways of working, the old tradecraft from the Cold War. They don’t trust electronic communications any more.”

True or False? TRUE

‘Spooks: The Greater Good’ is out on DVD, Blu-ray, and Digital Download now. watch a trailer below.

Image credits: EOne Entertainment/MGM/Paramount/Universal Pictures/Columbia Pictures