3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Deep Cover

2025, Tom Kingsley (The Darkest Universe) -- Amazon

It was cute. "Cute" could almost become a Tag for many of the comedies we watch. The "I chuckled" version of "meh" ? 

At least write somewhat of a stub for this movie, that because you only thought of it as "cute", you will quickly forget it.

So, I see a movie about three improv actors dragged into doing undercover work for the London Met, with three faces I like, and I add it to our "something lite" list. Well, technically Amazon doesn't have Lists but mentally OK ? Most services only allow you a single List, sort of a To Be Watched, but it often ends up retaining those long after you have watched them, a reminder of the good, the bad and the meh.

Yes, we could probably do a couple of paragraphs on the interfaces of streaming services, which after almost a decade in existence, have not improved in the slightest, and so often depend on the platform the app is running. Most are OK, some, like Amazon, are just absolutely terrible.

So, Kat (Bryce Dallas Howard, Rocketman) is a failed American actor in London who has taken to teaching improv to make ends meet. Marlon (Orlando Bloom, Gran Turismo) is a failed British actor who can't get any jobs beyond terrible ads, or ... shudder ... standing on street corners, in costume, with a spinny sign. Hugh (Nick Mohammed, Renegade Nell) is an IT Guy lacking confidence who ends up at Kat's class,  seeking said confidence, while Marlon is lurking around in the back. 

They are approached by DS Billings (Sean Bean, Possessor) to assist him in some light undercover work -- go into a corner shop and buy some black market cigarettes. Simple work, easy peasy, and get some cash, which Kat really needs. Kat knows she can do it, Marlon needs, desperately, to now his character and Hugh has barely had one "lesson", is barely socially functional, and stumbles over everything. They over-act everything and instead of cigarettes, they end up in front of low-level dealer Fly. And they are dubbed Bonnie, Roach and The Squire, a new gang in London seeking to make their mark, and are here to buy some cocaine. Billings seems thrilled. This whole "deal" is interrupted by the Albanians, from whom Fly (Paddy Considine, House of the Dragon) had stolen the cocaine, and Bonnie ends up convincing the angry Albanians to buy back their own cocaine -- she's pretty good under pressure. Fly is thrilled; Billings is over the moon.

So, like all comedies, when they should be turning on their heels and getting the fuck out of Dodge, they go in deeper. "Yes, and..... ?" as the improv instruction says. After accidentally killing (!!!) a retired enforcer who owed Fly money, they start working directly for him, and his own enforcer, mysterious, white haired Shosh (Sonoya Mizuno, House of the Dragon), even going out for a night on the town and getting sloshed. Insert some standard comedy confusion when Kat/Bonnie runs into her London friends out for a stagette, and she does her best to drunkenly straddle both characters. Now tight with the boss, they end up being introduced his Fly's boss.

Things only get worse for them. Yet they continually improv their way out of it. The power of improv!

Abandoning the recap, as you always do? Can't commit?

If I liked anything a lot about this movie it was the side-joke that Marlon's ante-upped "character", a belligerent, ex-con with anger issues, who is entirely unlike his own actual foppish personality is a mirror to Orlando Bloom's own career -- just go ahead and enter Orlando Bloom into Amazon's own search engine, and you will see at least two movies where Bloom plays a character very much like Roach, shaved head and all. Bryce Dallas Howard pretty much plays on point for herself, and Nick Mohammed is first-season Nathan Shelley.

The juxtaposition between these average people ending up as actual criminals while the movie humanizes the low-level crime boss and his enforcer is fun, making the real Bad Guys not only a dirty cop but other more violent, more deadly criminals. Is there a point to their journey? For Roach and The Squire, definitely but I think Bonnie ends up exactly where she was at the beginning, which is not so bad afterall, which was the point of her journey.

Cue the ante-upped sequel where they end up in a few shady, European drug-cartel run city alley ways, while on a Improv Tour.

P.S. Yes, Sean Bean dies.