“Deep Cover” is an exceptionally silly Brit comedy about improv actors lying on the fly as undercover bait for London police. Logic goes out the window early on, with no means of re-entry.
And it’s built around Bryce Dallas Howard, Nepo Baby Number One on filmdom’s bad casting news rap sheet.
But here’s what it has going for it. It has Sean Bean as a well-past-it-and-knows-it cop who recruits failing improv actors as undercover buyers to bust drug dealers. “Ted Lasso” mensch Nick Mohammed plays the mousiest of the improvisers. Paddy Considine is the “somp’un’s not right with you lot” drug dealer. Here’s Ian McShane, going full Scots for his cranky, Jenga-obsessed kingpin.
“Pull th’wrong piece and it all comes dooooooooon!”
And then there’s the scene stealer, the co-star who lands a laugh in every scene, almost every single time he opens his mouth. Orlando Bloom plays a “Methody” nutcase actor, 40something and still booking single-line commercials, obsessive about getting “deep” into every character, even the street corner elf (LOL) he has to play to plug a department store’s holiday offerings.
Of course the guy’s name is “Marlon.” Of course he’s from Manchester. But if you’re trying to bluff murderous mobsters into not suspecting you’re “fake,” and thus offing you, the wild-eyed gone-to-seed loon is handy to have around.
“Mess with the bull,” Marlon hisses, leaning into Manchester-accented David Caruso, “you get th’ORNS!”
Marlon, Kat (Howard) and on-the-spectrum tech-nerd Hugh (Mohammed) are the losers hardbitten Sgt. Billings (Bean) recruits for his “two hundred quid a pop” “Donnie Brasco” gig — play-act “buyers” who bait sellers into selling them drugs so he can make the busts.
Considine is “Fly,” the mid-level dealer they stumble into when all they were looking for was a quick score. He tests them, and who wouldn’t? Tough talk or not, these “city slickers” don’t pass the smell test.
The gag here is that undercover work has the same “rules” as onstage improv. Number one, “Never break character.” Number two? “Say YES.” Improvisers use “Yes AND” as transitions for their on-the-spot invented dialogue. And number three, “Always trust your partner.”
But will that, the toy guns and squeaky toy grenade Marlon insists his “character,” “Roach” would carry, see them through? Kat becomes tough-talking “Bonnie” (missing her Clyde), the “brains” of the outfit. Painfully shy mystery man Hugh is “The Squire.” God knows what he’s capable of. Especially after he’s designated drug-deal “taster,” sucking up his first-ever lines of cocaine in the bargain.
Mohammed is amusingly hapless and bounces off Bloom’s over-the-top loon nicely. Sonoya Mizuno plays Fly’s scary/sexy bi-curious gunslinger, and co-screenwriters Colin Treverrow and Ben Ashendon play unfunny cops who really should stick to writing.
Enough people (myself included) have beaten the bliss out of Bryce Dallas Howard’s limitations over the years, so I’ll just say she’s dead weight here, the least convincing “improviser” in the cast.
But McShane shimmers and Bloom reminds us that he’s been funny, he’s good at being self-serious and he’s still a lot more than Legolas, his arrows and his “Lord of the Rings” ears.
I found myself uttering the same words Keira Knightley said to me in an interview once, over and over again, when I mentioned I’d be talking to her onetime “Pirates of the Caribbean” co-star later that day.
“Orlando F—–g Bloom,” she said, not once or twice or thrice, shaking her head and laughing as she did. There’s a story there, and no, she didn’t tell it to me. That’s for her memoirs.
In “Deep Cover,” Orlando F—-g Bloom gets the dirty, funny job done, and how.
Rating: R, violence, drug abuse, profanity
Cast: Bryce Dallas Howard, Orlando Bloom, Nick Mohammed, Paddy Considine, Sonoya Mizuno, Sean Bean and Ian McShane.
Credits: Directed by Tom Kingsley, scripted by Derek Connolly, Colin Treverrow, Ben Ashendon and Alexander Owen. An MGM/Amazon Prime release.
Running time: 1:39
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