At this point, Tony Gilroy is probably best known for a different project—one where he uses the trappings of a beloved IP to Trojan-horse his ideas and sharp scriptwriting into a mass audience. Andor is both a more ambitious and more successful version of that conceit, but you can see the blueprints here, a film that lives and die on the strength of its script — that often feels like an inversion of the very thriller tropes it’s trafficking in.

The most boring and unsuccessful parts of this film are, ironically, the action scenes, which sometimes descend into self-parody. (The wolf sequence and the interminable Manila chase, come to mind.) Conversely, the film thrives in the spaces Gilroy cares about: the substrata, the nameless, dimly lit war rooms populated by Ed Norton and his ilk, the Reston and Fairfax offices often left generic and faceless in the hands of less interesting filmmakers. The script’s most interesting moments are spent here: snapshots from a Canadian forestry company, being on hold with an Australian rent-a-cop agency, a perfect combination of terror and banality that feels, in 2025, ahead of its time. Gilroy is interested in exploring (without valorizing) the deep and unsettling ways we are always surveilled: his direction here is at its best when Ed Norton and Jeremy Renner are playing cat and mouse—not with guns and flashbangs, but with grainy surveillance photos and hastily glued passports.

This is not a great film, but it has its moments and has earned its devotees. Rachel Weisz does a great job in what is, frankly, an underwritten role; Renner, while he doesn’t quite sell himself as an action star, is doing something more than cosplaying Matt Damon, with hints of nuance and personality around the edges that make a meaningful difference for the film.

This could have been a much worse movie than it ended up being; Gilroy did the best with what he had.

★★★