John Kiriakou rewatches Salt, Snowden and Bridge of Spies for GQ
The former CIA officer's second round of spy-movie breakdowns runs from The Equalizer 3 to Burn Notice, and it passed 800,000 views in three days.
GQStory of Why this story? The channel's weekly summary: what went up this week, what is drawing views now, and where the channel stands among similar channels.
Ex-CIA Officer Breaks Down More Spy Movies
The spy came back. GQ's second spy-movie breakdown with John Kiriakou, the former CIA officer best known for going public about the agency's interrogation program, went up on September 28 and had passed 800,000 views three days later. That makes it the busiest thing on the channel by a wide margin.
This round takes in eleven titles. Some are serious: Steven Spielberg's Bridge of Spies, with Tom Hanks negotiating the Cold War prisoner exchange, and Oliver Stone's Snowden. Some are not: Angelina Jolie's double-agent turn in Salt, the Kevin Hart and Dwayne Johnson comedy Central Intelligence. Television gets a look too, with Prison Break, Burn Notice and The Blacklist, and the reel closes on Sicario: Day of the Soldado.
The week's other upload went the other way, from the field to the set. Robert Pattinson and director Lance Oppenheim sat down to revisit Primetime, in which Pattinson plays Chris Hansen of To Catch a Predator, along with The Batman and Oppenheim's documentary Ren Faire. It has drawn a steadier crowd, past 330,000 views.
The breakdown format keeps paying off further back as well. Neil deGrasse Tyson's sci-fi edition, from Interstellar to Project Hail Mary, is past 1.2 million views at 24 days old and is still drawing more each day than the Pattinson interview.
Among the fashion and lifestyle channels of similar size, Sophie Silva is the one having the big stretch, running at about twice her usual pace, while Vogue, HopeScope and Vlad and Chris are also a little above their norm. GQ's own week came from a man who used to keep secrets for a living.
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The videos drawing views on GQ right now
- Channel
- GQ
- Subscribers
- 8,330,000
- Videos published this week
- 2
- Video published
- September 28, 2026
- Video views so far
- 829,093
The numbers
Here are the figures behind GQ's week.
💡 Test your knowledge
Before playing Batman, Robert Pattinson became famous as Edward Cullen in which film series?
Pattinson played the vampire Edward Cullen across all five Twilight films, starting in 2008.
