Blood and Gifts

J.T. Rogers continues to globalize American drama with this pulse-quickening spy tale about CIA covert ops against the Soviets in 1980s Afghanistan. Bartlett Sher's masterfully focused production has a crackerjack ensemble—led by Jeremy Davidson's swaggering American agent and Jefferson Mays as a Brit who watches the radicalization of Islamic freedom fighters with prescient horror.—David Cote