Useless Movie Trivia For
Spy Game
Memorable Movie Quotes
Nathan Muir: If I'm walking into a shit storm I wanna know which way the wind's blowing.
Nathan Muir: You go off the reservation, I will not come after you.
Nathan Muir: We didn't know when the Doc was going to be giving the Shiek his physical but it was our one and only opportunity to take him out. So I didn't have the usual time to butter him up. Which means we needed twice the sex with half the foreplay.
Nathan Muir: Troy, do you remember when we could tell the good guys from the bad guys?
Trivia
Part of the film was originally set to have been filmed in Israel, but due to the sudden escalation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (in September-October 2000), and following the requirements of the actors' insurance companies, the filming took place in Morocco instead.
The scene where Robert Redford's character asks Brad Pitt's character if he knew anybody in 'this apartment house' and tells him to be up on one of the balconies in five minutes is from a book by former Mossad agent Victor Ostrovsky who describes this test as part of the training of a Mossad agent.
Kimberly Paige, playing the part of Sandy at the embassy in Berlin, is wife of the former US ambassador to Hungary, the location where the Berlin scenes were filmed.
The building identified as the US Embassy in Hong Kong is actually the headquarters of HSBC - the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation.
Dedicated to the memory of Elizabeth Jean Scott (died 2001), mother of Tony Scott and Ridley Scott.
Nathan Muir's personal car is a Porsche 912, basically a 911 with boxer 4 engine produced for a short while in the late 60s.
Goofs
Late-1990s vintage computers and monitors appear in the scenes set in 1985 (the embassy in Beirut) and 1991 (the CIA headquarters).
While in Lebanon in 1985, Tom is wearing a style of San Diego Padres hat that did not exist until the early 1990s.
The cellphone that Muir uses was not available in 1991 when the movie was set. First models in the Nokia 2100 series were available during the summer of 1994, many other 21xx models much later on in America.
By April 1975, the US air base at Danang had been evacuated.
There's a huge Coca-Cola sign in the Beirut café in 1985, but Coca-Cola wasn't re-introduced to the Lebanese market until July 1990, after a 23 year absence.
When Muir talks to Commander Wiley on the phone near the end of the film, a caption shown misspells Su Chou as "Su Cho".
When Nathan Muir is approaching the exit of the CIA building, close to give his badge on his final day, he has already tipped off the press and he thinks Bishop is fine. But he sees on the TV screen a new "live report from Hong Kong" where the reporter says that Bishop was already dead. It is about 3pm in Langley when Muir is leaving, which makes it impossible to be daylight in Hong Kong... yet the live report from Hong Kong is clearly in daylight.
When Harry Duncan counteroffers $282,000 to the Chinese General to shut off the power, he actually said $2,820,000 in Chinese instead.
USA Box Office Info
Budget: $92,000,000
Gross: $62,326,785
Filming Dates:5 November 2000 - 16 March 2001
Filming Locations
Beirut, Lebanon
Berlin, Germany
Budapest, Hungary
Casablanca, Morocco
Georgetown, Washington, District of Columbia, USA
Glaxo SmithKline, Stevenage, Hertfordshire, England, UK
Haifa, Israel
Hong Kong, China
Lloyd's Building, Lime Street, Broadgate, London, England, UK
London, England, UK
Ouarzazate, Morocco
Oxford, Oxfordshire, England, UK
Prague, Czech Republic
Regent's Park, London, England, UK
Shepperton Studios, Shepperton, Surrey, England, UK
(studio)
Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada
Tököl, Hungary
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Washington, District of Columbia, USA