Directed by Tom Kingsley — Screenplay by Colin Trevorrow, Derek Connolly, Ben Ashenden, and Alexander Owen.
Tom Kingsley’s Deep Cover is a crime comedy film about a group of improvisational comedy performers who are hired to use their talents to go undercover in London’s criminal underworld. The film follows Kat Boyles (played by Bryce Dallas Howard), an improv teacher, Marlon (played by Orlando Bloom), a struggling method actor, and Hugh (played by Nick Mohammed), a socially awkward IT worker, who has joined Kat’s comedy group to improve his communication skills and make friends. Their involvement with law enforcement begins when Kat is approached by Detective Sergeant Graham Billings (played by Sean Bean) following one of her comedy shows. Although their first attempt at improvising undercover has some rough edges, they soon find that they’re so convincing that it may get them into trouble.
Well, color me surprised. I think this might be the best new comedy I’ve seen all year. It has got a little bit of Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, a little bit of Barry, a little bit of 21 Jump Street, and, ultimately, is just a really good time that takes its improvisation gimmick to the highest level. Nick Mohammed is deployed perfectly, as he puts his Ted Lasso character’s social-awkward shtick to great use here as a ‘fish out of water’ type. Then there’s Orlando Bloom, who hasn’t been this good in more than a decade. He makes you fully buy into his character’s struggling, uncontrollable method actor type, and he and Mohammed make for such good pairings with Bryce Dallas Howard’s more straight-forward improv teacher. They’re surrounded by a uniformly strong supporting cast that includes Ian McShane, Paddy Considine, and Sonoya Mizuno, among others, with all three of them playing individuals in the aforementioned criminal underworld.
Admittedly, you see various plot developments coming from a mile away, but that is easily ignored given the consistent laughs that the film earns. As you’d expect an improvisational comedy-centric film to be, actions are constantly one-upped or taken to another level, but it never goes so far that the film loses you or that it becomes too silly to accept in a crime-comedy setting. When the film threatens to become repetitive, it zigs or zags and changes the characters’ approach, point of view, or changes the nature of the foundation upon which they stand in relatively entertaining ways. One thing that was, however, ‘hit or miss’ was the law enforcement perspective in this that we see with Ben Ashenden and Alexander Owen’s characters. Owen and Ashenden are perfectly fine, but, each time we return to them, they’re basically doing variations on the same joke, which, I think, can get old for some viewers.
I will say that it is a shame that the film is likely to disappear amongst the hundreds of other Prime Video originals without being seen by an audience of the size it deserves. Though as sad as that destiny may be, one thing is for certain, Deep Cover, a laugh-out-loud comedy, is a true streaming film hidden gem, and I highly recommend that you check it out, if you’re looking for a fun and inventive crime-comedy with a strong cast of actors, as well as characters who convincingly, and humorously, think on their feet.
7.9 out of 10
– Review written by Jeffrey Rex Bertelsen.
I'm Jeffrey Rex 