They’ve got one of the toughest and most important jobs in the world, but have you ever noticed how few movies there actually are about Secret Service agents? It’s one of the most inherently dramatic occupations you can have, entrusted with the security of the most powerful human being in the world, defending them from threats both foreign and domestic. And yet while the Secret Service makes a cameo in practically every film where the President of the United States shows up, there are only a handful of movies that place these American heroes front and center, or at least in a prominent supporting role.
This weekend marks the release of Olympus Has Fallen, which stars Gerard Butler as the only Secret Service agent in a White House overrun with North Korean terrorists, and you’ll have to wait for our review to find out if it’s one of the good ones. Until then, why not get warmed up with CraveOnline‘s picks for The Eight Best Secret Service Movies Ever Made.
Best Secret Service Movies
Yes, only eight. It’s not our fault Murder at 1600 sucked.
Proof positive that there aren’t very many Secret Service movies, and even fewer good ones: First Kid actually eked its way onto our list of The Best Secret Service Movies Ever Made. First Kid hails from that brief period in the 1990s when standup comedian Sinbad was actually allowed to star in movies, and it’s one of only two decent films that he ever did. (Houseguest wasn’t all that bad either.) Sinbad stars as Sam Simms, a Secret Service Agent who gets booted off of POTUS detail and demoted to guarding the President’s son, aka “The First Kid,” played by Brock Pierce. Along the way he becomes a surrogate father figure, because that’s the kind of movie this is. First Kid may be beyond clichéd, but that doesn’t mean it’s bad. Mostly it’s just harmless, heartwarming family mischief from director David M. Evans (The Sandlot).
Kevin Costner was one of the biggest actors in the world when he starred in The Bodyguard, alongside newcomer Whitney Houston, who made her feature film debut as a pop star with a deadly stalker. Costner plays Frank Farmer, a former Secret Service agent now reduced to celebrity bodyguard, but who maintains his discipline until he (gasp!) falls in love with his client. The Bodyguard isn’t all that amazing a movie (we also dropped it down a few slots because it’s not about an active-duty Secret Service Agent), but it was an enormous hit: The Bodyguard was the second highest grossing film of 1992, behind Disney’s Aladdin, and still boasts the best-selling soundtrack of all time (and fourth best-selling album overall). And to think, the studios rejected The Bodyguard a reported sixty-seven times, going back the 1970s, when Steve McQueen was originally slated to star opposite Diana Ross.
Back when Nicolas Cage was best known for comedies like Moonstruck and Honeymoon in Vegas, he co-starred with Shirley MacLaine in an excellent little comedy called Guarding Tess. MacLaine plays former First Lady Tess Carlisle, who requests that her long-suffering bodyguard Doug Chesnic, played by Cage, be assigned to her permanently. Tess drives Doug nuts with her nutty demands, but when she’s kidnapped, he discovers just how much he cared about her all along. Guarding Tess is a trifle, but it’s a well-made trifle with great chemistry between Cage and MacLaine, and is still one of Cage’s funniest comedy movies.
A gimmick movie, but a really good one, Vantage Point tells the story of a presidential assassination from six different points of view, each overlapping story revealing new information about the others until ultimately, the entire truth is revealed. William Hurt plays the President of the United States, and Dennis Quaid and Matthew Fox play the Secret Service Agents on the hunt for his killer. Sigourney Weaver, Forest Whitaker and The Last Stand’s Eduardo Noriega fill out the cast, but revealing what exactly parts they have to play would ruin Pete Travis’s many twists and turns. Vantage Point doesn’t amount to terribly much, but it’s a clever thriller from any angle.
Kevin Kline stars in this Capraesque comedy classic from director Ivan Reitman, about the owner of a temp agency who just happens to look exactly like the President of the United States, and who winds up taking his place when the real President suffers a stroke. Kline is wonderful in both roles, and although the film is a little sentimental by today’s jaded standards, the fantasy that a good person could turn America around because they’re inexperienced at politics is at least an innocent one. Dave was a breakout role for Ving Rhames, who stole most of his scenes as Secret Service Agent Duane Stevenson, who likes the fake president but isn’t sure if he’d actually take a bullet for him. Rhames of course went on to co-star in Pulp Fiction the following year, and the rest is history.
The President’s daughter has been abducted by a sex slavery ring, and the Secret Service enlists a Delta Force Operative played by Val Kilmer to help find her. The first catch is, they only have two days to find her before the media realizes she’s gone, and unintentionally alerts the kidnappers to her real identity. The second catch is, the President might not actually want her back. Spartan isn’t as roundabout as David Mamet films usually are, relying more on old-fashioned suspense as Kilmer comes ever closer to the President’s daughter, played by a then-unknown Kristen Bell. But that doesn’t make it any less exciting and unexpected. Spartan is one of Val Kilmer’s better movies, and a particularly underrated entry in David Mamet’s oeuvre.
William Peterson and John Pankow are Secret Service Agents on the hunt for a counterfeiter played by the ever-flamboyant Willem Dafoe. Peterson will stop at nothing to avenge the death of his former partner, challenging Pankow’s loyalty as Peterson slips ever further off the edge into vigilantism. Seen by some as an unofficial double feature with William Friedkin’s earlier crime saga The French Connection, his To Live and Die in L.A. boasts the same moral ambiguity and a comparably exhilarating – some might even say superior – car chase between our heroes and an unexpectedly well organized crime ring with… Oh, let’s just call it a secret. To Live and Die in L.A. is stylish, exciting and dramatic as all hell.
One of the best thrillers of the 1990s, a decade with no shortage of great thrillers, In the Line of Fire stars Clint Eastwood as Frank Horrigan, a Secret Service Agent haunted by memories of the JFK assassination, when he failed to save the President’s life. Frank finally has an opportunity to make amends when a former CIA agent played by John Malkovich threatens to kill the current Commander-in-Chief. Frank gets himself assigned to the President’s detail, overcoming his age and his enemy’s genius to save the day. Wolfgang Peterson’s thriller is the definition of slick, with a taut screenplay and a spectacular cast – Malkovich even got an Oscar nomination – transforming In the Line of Fire into a modern classic, and our pick for the best Secret Service movie ever made.
William Bibbiani is the editor of CraveOnline’s Film Channel, co-host of The B-Movies Podcast, co-star of The Trailer Hitch, and the writer of The Test of Time. Follow him on Twitter at @WilliamBibbiani.
