Spy Game is a 2001 action thriller film directed by Tony Scott and starring Robert Redford and Brad Pitt.

The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) learns that its asset Tom Bishop has been arrested at a People's Liberation Army prison in Suzhou and will be executed in 24 hours unless the U.S. government claims him and bargains for his release.

A group of CIA executives summon Nathan Muir, a veteran case officer and Bishop's mentor, who plans to retire from the Agency at the end of the day.

Unknown to them, Muir was tipped off about Bishop's capture by fellow CIA veteran Harry Duncan, the Hong Kong Station Chief.

Muir leaks the story to CNN through an MI6 contact, Digby 'Digger' Gibson in Hong Kong, believing that public pressure would force American intervention.

They are stalled briefly before a phone call to the FCC from Deputy Director for Operations Charles Harker results in CNN retracting the story as a hoax.

In a series of flashbacks, Bishop is troubled by Muir's conviction that civilian "assets" who endangered a mission should be sacrificed to preserve the "greater good."

The website's consensus reads: " The outcome of the kinetic Spy Game is never in doubt, but it is fun watching Robert Redford and Brad Pitt work.

"[11] In 2022, Michael Frost Beckner, the co-screenwriter of Spy Game, published a trilogy of novels featuring characters from the film: Muir’s Gambit, Bishop's Endgame, and Aiken in Check.