The Spy is a powerful and thought-provoking Netflix limited series in which Sacha Baron Cohen is found in a serious role rather than his more common comic roles.  I loved the comedies that I watched. He plays the male lead in the series which purports to tell the true and tragic story of Eli Cohen (no relation), an astounding under deep cover Israeli Mossad agent in Syria in the 1960s.

Hadar Ratzon Rotem plays Cohens intense wife, Nadia, and Noah Emmerich  his morally conflicted handler, Dan Peleg. It is basically a thriller, and a good one, but it is also more than that.

This film asks some interesting and important questions about how far can a state go in asking one of its citizens to go in making sacrifices for his or her country? How big must an ask be, before it is too big? Are there limits on what a country can ask, if the work of that individual astonishingly valuable to the country?

As well there is a corollary question, when is an individual wrong in sacrificing himself and his family for the benefit of his or her country? When is it legitimate for the citizen and family to say the limit of sacrifice has been reached?  When must the country say, this is the limit and refrain from using him or her anymore because anything beyond this is intolerable?

Or are there no such limits? What can possibly be right and just?

Finally, what would it mean if there were no limits?

These are interesting and important questions handled with maturity rather than juvenile bravado unlike so many other films. Especially, action films which I sometimes think have reached their limits.

I think this series is worth a watch.