Spies Like Us  

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Spies Like Us is a 1985 American comedy film directed by John Landis and starring Chevy Chase, Dan Aykroyd, Steve Forrest, and Donna Dixon. The film presents the comic adventures of two novice intelligence agents sent to the Soviet Union. Originally written by Aykroyd and Dave Thomas to star Aykroyd and John Belushi at Universal, the script went into turnaround and was later picked up by Warner Bros. with Aykroyd and Chase starring.

The film is an homage to the famous Road to … film series which starred Bob Hope and Bing Crosby. Hope himself makes a cameo in one scene. Other cameos in the film include directors Terry Gilliam, Sam Raimi, Costa-Gavras, Martin Brest, Frank Oz, and Joel Coen, musician B.B. King, and visual effects pioneer Ray Harryhausen. The film received negative reviews from critics, but it became a box office success and receive a cult following.

Plot

Austin Millbarge is a code breaker dwelling in the dark basement at the Pentagon who aspires to escape his under-respected job to become a secret agent. Emmett Fitz-Hume, a wisecracking, pencil-pushing son of an envoy, takes the foreign service exam under peer pressure. Millbarge and Fitz-Hume meet during the test, on which Fitz-Hume openly attempts to cheat after an attempt to bribe his immediate supervisor in exchange for the answers backfires. Millbarge, however, was not prepared to take the test, having had only one day to study after his supervisor deliberately withheld a notice for two weeks leaving him vulnerable to fail and having to remain in the bowels of the Pentagon.

Needing two expendable agents to act as decoys to draw attention away from a more capable team, the DIA decides to enlist Fitz-Hume and Millbarge, promote them to be Foreign Service operatives, rush them through minimal training, and then send them on an undefined mission inside Soviet Central Asia. Meanwhile, two professional agents are well on their way to reaching the real objective: the seizure of a mobile SS-50 ICBM launcher in Soviet territory. A member of the main team is killed, while Millbarge and Fitz-Hume manage to escape multiple enemy attacks and eventually encounter Karen Boyer, the surviving operative from the main team.

In the Pamir Mountains of the Tajik Soviet Socialist Republic, the trio overpowers the mobile missile guard unit using hastily constructed extraterrestrial outfits and tranquilizer guns. Following orders in real-time from the intelligence agency (operating from a military bunker located deep under an abandoned drive-in theater), they begin to operate the launcher. At the end of their instructions, the vehicle launches the ICBM into space, targeting an unspecified area in the United States. Thinking they have started a nuclear war, the American agents and their Soviet counterparts pair up to have sex before the world ends.

Meanwhile, at the operations bunker, the military generals initiate the conversion of the drive-in theater to expose what is hidden beneath the screens and projection booth: a huge black-op SDI-esque laser and collector/emitter screen. The purpose of sending the agents to launch a Soviet ICBM is exposed as a means to test this anti-ballistic missile system, but the laser fails to intercept the nuclear missile. Despite this, the military commanders at the site choose not to inform the US government that the missile launch was not initiated by the Soviet authorities, revealing a twisted contingency plan of letting the impending thermonuclear war commence to "preserve the American way of life".

Back in the Soviet Union, horrified at the thought of having launched a nuclear missile at their own country, the American spies and the Soviet soldiers use Millbarge's technical knowledge to transmit instructions to the traveling missile, sending it off into space where it detonates harmlessly. Immediately after, the underground bunker is stormed by U.S. Army Rangers, and the intelligence and military officials involved in the covert operation are arrested. Millbarge, Fitz-Hume, and Boyer go on to become nuclear disarmament negotiators, playing a nuclear version of Risk-meets-Trivial Pursuit against their Soviet friends.

Cast

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Unless indicated otherwise, the text in this article is either based on Wikipedia article "Spies Like Us" or another language Wikipedia page thereof used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License; or on research by Jahsonic and friends. See Art and Popular Culture's copyright notice.

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