Prime Video has added Deep Cover, a fresh and funny new British comedy.
Prepare to have your expectations thrown out of the window in a comedy that's not what it seems. And it’s not only the audience that’s in for some surprises. The same applies to the characters in the comedy action movie.
In what starts out looking like a gritty crime caper, we’re introduced to Kat (Bryce Dallas Howard), an easy-going one-time improv comedian who, with her career in disarray, now coaches wannabes in the hope of striking gold by finding the next big improv thing.
Among her regulars is Marlon (Orlando Bloom), committed to The Method but with only a bit-part in a pizza commercial to his name. Hugh (Nick Mohammed), is his total opposite: an IT Manager who can't cope with social situations and has no friends at work. He's not fussed about comedy. All he wants is friends who can show him the way in social situations.
Much to their surprise, they're recruited by the hard-nosed Billings (Sean Bean), a cop trying to find a way of infiltrating a local gang, headed up by Fry (Paddy Considine). The hapless trio think this will be a strictly small-time job — catching crooks selling knock-off cigarettes, that sort of thing — but they couldn’t be more wrong.
Because Fry works for kingpin Metcalfe (Ian McShane), and suddenly they’re up to their necks in bringing down a massive drugs empire. For some reason, though, Billings seems to have gone AWOL.
The British flavor is apparent right from the get-go. Tom Kingsley, director of BAFTA winning TV comedy Stath Lets Flats, is at the helm of a caper that can't get enough of taking both the audience and cast out of their comfort zone and milking it for every laugh it can get. You can almost see him rubbing his hands with glee as he deliberately casts his actors in roles that up-turn expectations — Orlando Bloom as an aspiring actor who thinks he's Brando, anybody? — and drops them into situations which mercilessly expose their characters’ weaknesses.
But what's most impressive about Deep Cover isn’t just its ability to make us laugh and deliver the unexpected, but the sheer guts of it all. On paper, this looks like a routine, gritty crime drama: on screen, it's something more. It's low budget but never feels or looks like it, there’s plenty of action and the one-liners come thick and fast but its release on Prime Video means it’s also aiming to win hearts and laughs on both sides of the Atlantic.
And it may have just enough cheeky charm to captivate American audiences. It would be well earned.
The ensemble cast is packed with familiar faces, some very much playing to type (Sean Bean's cop is exactly what you’d expect from him, in the best possible way) while others inevitably do the opposite. They all have their moments in the sun, but Bloom is a revelation as the method-acting Marlon, who can’t understand why his efforts to make it big have gotten him nowhere.
Ted Lasso's Nick Mohammed is on impressive form as well, as the clumsy but well- meaning member of the group who just wants to be accepted. It's near-impossible to imagine how they, and Howard’s Kate, will handle the pressure of going under cover and bring down the gang. But the biggest joke of all is that they all believed they’re capable of one of the hardest, sweat-inducing jobs in the entertainment business.
Improv comedy in front of a live audience is never for the faint-hearted. The start of the film tells us that "in comedy, as in battle, you must be prepared to die if you want to kill." It’s no exaggeration to say that Kingsley kills it with his little film that could — and did. And it has "cult favorite" written all over it.
Deep Cover is on Prime Video now.
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