THE STORY – Kat is an improv comedy teacher beginning to question if she’s missed her shot at success. When an undercover cop offers her the role of a lifetime, she recruits two of her students to infiltrate London’s gangland by impersonating dangerous criminals.
THE CAST – Bryce Dallas Howard, Orlando Bloom, Nick Mohammed, Paddy Considine, Sonoya Mizuno, Ian McShane, Sean Bean
THE TEAM – Tom Kinglsey (Director), Derek Connolly, Colin Trevorrow, Ben Ashenden and Alexander Owen (Writers)
THE RUNNING TIME – 100 Minutes
If “Deep Cover” isn’t the most Guy Ritchie movie Guy Ritchie never made, then it’s almost certainly the most Matthew Vaughn movie… ah, you get the drill. Forget about “Argylle” for a moment; better yet, forget it forever. If you choose to focus on the smarter action fare filmmakers like Ritchie and Vaughn have made in the past, namely “Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerres” and the “Kingsman” movies, you’re sure to respond well to Tom Kingsley’s new action comedy, which celebrated its international premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival before being unceremoniously dumped on Amazon Prime on Thursday. It’s a bitter end to a short-lived reveling period that began at London’s branch of the SXSW Festival earlier this month, and a shame, really, for while it seems worryingly silly on paper and has four credited screenwriters, it’s actually quite the gem.
The film opens with a quote that might as well be its premise, word for word: “Improv Comedy is like going into battle. If you want to kill, you have to be willing to die.” Though this is attributed to F.L. Adamson, having been pulled from his book “The Improv Guide,” no trace of such text (nor author) exists online, at least not anywhere this critic bothered to look. If it really doesn’t exist, my compliments to the chef (Kingsley and co., in this case) for leaning into the film’s fake it ‘til you make it schtick from the jump, as it’s a clever message for a romp about three improv comedians who find themselves embroiled in an underground/organized crime ring chock full of malicious drug lords and “John Wick” rejects (Plus one “Wick” regular).
Our trio, as is only fitting, consists of an unlikely few, all flailing in one sense or another. There’s Kat (Bryce Dallas Howard, speaking of “Argylle”), an improv comedy instructor whose mentees are finding more success in ten minutes of show business than she has in ten years. The two students who she links up with for this impromptu exercise are a struggling actor who goes by Marlon (Orlando Bloom) and Hugh (“Ted Lasso’s” Nick Mohammed), a corporate IT fixer who only signed up for Kat’s class in an effort to learn how to talk to his dickhead coworkers with tripping over his moment. These three are all rejects: A failed performer, a struggling one who believes he should approach a commercial audition as though he’s the second coming of Daniel Day-Lewis, and a square peg desperate to fit in every round hole he gets his eyes on. So when a mysterious cop named Billings (Sean Bean) stops by Kat’s workshop with an offer – to go undercover during a low-risk sting operation because improv comedians aren’t as easily sussed out as cops are – it’s hard to turn it down.
Of course, things go awry once Kat, Marlon, and Hugh make their way inside the lion’s den, where a mob boss called Fly (a great Paddy Considine) and his sidekick Shosh (“Ex Machina’s” Sonoya Mizuno) are quick to saddle the three improvisers with impossible-to-avoid tasks and subsequently deem them “the real deal.” Thus, “Deep Cover’s” de facto action heroes are entwined in the web of underground crime, and having to figure out their next moves on the fly. They come up with character names – Kat is “Bonnie,” Marlon is “Roach,” and Hugh, “The Squire” – backstories for their parts and loose plans should the production go haywire. Watching them pretend, especially in the form of Marlon’s efforts to go full-method on his co-stars, is even more fun than watching them react to what they’re doing once clear of their drug kingpin pal’s eyeline. Once Ian McShane shows up, playing a man even more serious about murder than Winston from the aforementioned “John Wick” franchise, the notion that everyone is in on the joke crystallizes even further.
The so-so chemistry between Dallas Howard, Bloom, and Muhammed even amounts to being irrelevant, both because their individual performances are the real meat here – especially Bloom, who splits the difference between staid and stupid so perfectly that the outcome is just silly – and the ridiculous film they’re in is the bone on which it sits. Credit for that, in all likelihood, is principally owed to two of the film’s co-writers, Derek Connolly and Colin Trevorrow, both of whom have heaps of experience in the blockbuster landscape where they co-wrote movies far less interesting (and watchable) than this. Sure, “Deep Cover” is far from a perfect film, nor is it even one that remains consistently interesting for its entirety. But it’s as funny, knowing, and flat-out entertaining, if not more so, than any other hit action-comedy to land on a streamer in 2025 so far. One only wishes that everyone could see it in theaters. Perhaps they’d be less inclined to judge this book by its (deep) cover.
