Movies Like
Movies Like Killers: Spy Action-Comedies
By Jordan A. · · 5 min read
Killers is Robert Luketic's 2010 action comedy with Ashton Kutcher and Katherine Heigl as a married couple who discover, three years in, that one of them used to kill people for the government and the other one's neighbors are now trying to collect a bounty. It was not well reviewed. It also does exactly what it says on the tin, and there is a specific Friday night where that is the correct choice.
The genre it belongs to is older and better than Killers is. The spy romance runs from Cary Grant charming Audrey Hepburn through a Paris murder plot to Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie shooting up their own kitchen. What holds it together is a simple bet: two attractive people with real chemistry, a plot that gives them a reason to lie to each other, and a tone that never asks you to care too much.
Here are eight that get the balance right, sorted by what kind of night you're having. Most run under two hours. None of them will change your life, and that is the point.
The direct comparisons
Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2005) is the film Killers is openly imitating. Doug Liman directed from a Simon Kinberg script, with Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie as married assassins working for rival agencies who get assigned to kill each other. It made $478.2 million worldwide and was the seventh biggest film of 2005. The domestic comedy in the first act is better than the shooting in the third. Donald Glover and Maya Erskine did a very different Prime Video series with the same title in 2024. The 2005 film is on Prime Video as of August 2026.
True Lies (1994) is James Cameron remaking the French comedy La Totale! and spending a reported $100 million doing it, the first film to cost that much. Arnold Schwarzenegger is a spy whose wife, Jamie Lee Curtis, thinks he sells computers. Curtis won the Golden Globe for best actress in a musical or comedy, which tells you how good she is in it. Two caveats: the Harrier sequence is enormous fun and the film's treatment of its villains has aged poorly. As of August 2026 it isn't on a US subscription service.
Knight and Day (2010) came out the same year as Killers and is the better version of the same idea. James Mangold directed, with Tom Cruise as an agent who may or may not be delusional and Cameron Diaz as the woman he keeps drugging and relocating. It grossed $261.9 million worldwide but opened badly, with the worst action debut of Cruise's career since Legend in 1986. Cruise is genuinely funny in it, playing the charm as slightly unhinged.
When you want the woman to be the dangerous one
The Long Kiss Goodnight (1996) is Renny Harlin directing a Shane Black script that sold for $4 million in 1994, a record at the time. Geena Davis plays a suburban schoolteacher with amnesia who turns out to be a CIA assassin, with Samuel L. Jackson as the private detective who finds out first. The dialogue is pure Black, meaning it's funnier than the plot deserves. It's more violent than Killers by a wide margin, so it isn't quite the same easy watch.
Charade (1963) is the classiest thing on this page. Stanley Donen directed Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn through a Paris plot involving a dead husband, a quarter million missing dollars, and three men who want it, with Walter Matthau and James Coburn among them. Henry Mancini scored it. The New York Times review at the time put it halfway between screwball comedy and North by Northwest, which is exactly right. Its copyright notice was defective, so it fell into the public domain immediately and prints vary in quality. It's on Prime Video as of August 2026.
Ensembles and easy laughs
Red (2010) is Robert Schwentke adapting a Warren Ellis and Cully Hamner comic from DC's WildStorm imprint. Bruce Willis, Morgan Freeman, John Malkovich and Helen Mirren play retired intelligence officers being hunted by the agency that trained them, with Mary-Louise Parker as the civilian dragged along. Mirren with a machine gun is the whole marketing campaign and it works. There's a sequel, Red 2, from 2013, which is worse.
Grosse Pointe Blank (1997) is the smartest film here. George Armitage directed John Cusack as a contract killer who takes a job in his hometown the same weekend as his ten year high school reunion, with Minnie Driver as the girl he abandoned on prom night and Alan Arkin as his terrified therapist. Joe Strummer scored it and the soundtrack is wall to wall Clash, Specials and Echo and the Bunnymen. It's a genuinely good film pretending to be a disposable one.
Romancing the Stone (1984) is Robert Zemeckis directing Diane Thomas's script, with Kathleen Turner as a romance novelist who has to fly to Colombia to ransom her sister and Michael Douglas as the smuggler she hires. Danny DeVito is the comic relief. It won the Golden Globe for best musical or comedy and Turner won for best actress. It's the warmest film on this list and the one most likely to work for two people with different taste.
How to pick tonight
If you want the closest thing to Killers with better execution, Mr. & Mrs. Smith or Knight and Day. If you want to be actually charmed rather than just entertained, Charade or Romancing the Stone. Grosse Pointe Blank is the pick if one of you wants a real movie and the other wants something light, because it is both. Red is the easiest thing here to put on with no attention span at all.
If you'd rather have a shortlist built for you, our movie recommendation tool starts from what you already like.
Topics covered: killers, action, comedy, spy, romance, date-night, charade, grosse-pointe-blank
About the author
Jordan A., Founder, BingeNext
Jordan A. is the founder of BingeNext and writes every guide on this site. He built the recommendation engine after one too many nights lost to the streaming menu, and he still tests every pick the hard way: by watching it.