The Angel

While espionage movies are often "high-stakes tales of intrigue," this is as high-stakes and intriguing as the real world can get. Set amid the backdrop of seemingly insurmountable tensions and impending war between Egypt and Israel, The Angel tells the true story of Ashraf Marwan, a high-ranking Egyptian diplomat who tried to give the Israelis advance warning of Egypt and Syria's impending attacks on Israel. As a result, Israel's advance knowledge of Egypt's offensive on Yom Kippur in 1973 led to the Yom Kippur War ending after a bloody three-week stalemate that neither side wanted to repeat, eventually leading to the peace talks and treaties that emerged from the Camp David Accords.

The movie does an excellent job of showing the double/triple/quadruple life Marwan led. It's the kind of story that could easily fly off the rails, but the story effectively conveys the unrelenting challenges Marwan must have faced not only as someone shuttling between the Egyptian government, terrorists, and Israeli intelligence, but also his private life. It also manages to be a very good starting point for the context of why the Middle East is such a hotbed of unceasing tension between nations. It remains a mysterious story -- Marwan died under mysterious circumstances in 2007, only three weeks after an Israeli court confirmed him as an agent who gave Israel information -- but it's also the kind of action-packed story that has translated well into a movie.