Ah, improv, the gift that keeps on giving. When it’s right, that spontaneous joke creation can give you a high better than anything you’ve ever experienced before. Deep Cover finds some of those highs in a different medium, a movie I would have gladly watched in a theater but have to settle for on a night in on Amazon Prime. Before we start I need an example of a great comedy trio!
It’s tough times for Kat (Bryce Dallas Howard). Time has passed the actress by, as she’s teaching improv in London but about to lose her work visa. Fate comes to her in the form of detective Billings (Sean Bean), who uses improvisers to find out where drug supplies are coming from. He pays Kat to bring two others to help her with the latest purchase. After her first, um, 10ish choices fall through, she pulls in IT worker and improv beginner Hugh (Nick Mohammed) and method acting wannabe Marlon (Orlando Bloom) to help make some quick cash and really act in…something. This puts the trio on a collision course with the local kingpin Fly (Paddy Considine) and his scary muscle Shosh (Sonoya Mizuno).
For a movie built upon improv comedians, Deep Cover thankfully never feels like it’s script was free wheelin. This puts the plot closer to equal footing with the comedy, a feat not tried since the great Game Night a few years ago. The result? A story that builds to the climax instead of running out of steam by the hour mark. Action sequences have well thought out choreography, using the novice nature of the 3 comedians to deliver the funny, not some forced sight gag. This makes those sequences get funnier as they go along, usually punctuated by a punch line organically spawn from the situation we find ourselves in. There’s even a plot twist or two that legitimately caught me off guard, not usually something I’m looking for in a funny movie, but very welcome to keep me on my toes as we get to the end.
But Deep Cover is a comedy, so it’s really banking on Bryce Dallas Howard, Nick Mohammed, and Orlando Bloom to embrace their inner comedy nerds, something we really haven’t seen from 2 of the 3, and definitely not together. But the improv Gods smiled down upon us: those 3 find magic with their chemistry together, with Howard being the glue, Mohammed the awkward humorist and Bloom the deranged overly dramatic actor. Each scene has a base built in where Kat introduces something, Marlon goes down some emotionally turbulent rabbit hole, and Hugh fails trying to keep up, as Kat grows increasingly upset and confused at her coworkers but Yes And’s their nonsense. Even Howard gets a chance to let loose here and there with surprising success, especially at an intervention with her friends. Supporting our troupe are British vets like Sean Bean and Paddy Considine, happily doing the plot lifting to let the three leads make the laughs.
Deep Cover isn’t winning any awards. But at least it doesn’t fail where other streaming movies have: entertain the audience. I’d love to see this trio continue, particularly Orlando Bloom. This is a new lane I hope he continues to ride in, going more and more deranged method as the movies go along, eventually leading to him cosplaying as Jack Sparrow while Nick Mohammed is forced to be his character from Pirates of the Caribbean.