If you want a fun, devilishly dark, fast-paced comedic joy ride on a Friday night, you won’t go far wrong with Deep Cover. Deep Cover premiered at SXSW London and is streaming on Prime Video starting June 12.
If I were to tell you there was a brand new movie centred around London’s criminal underworld starring Orlando Bloom (Troy), Bryce Dallas Howard (Jurassic World: Dominion), Sean Bean (This City is Ours), Paddy Considine (MobLand) and Ian McShane (Deadwood), written by Colin Trevorrow (Jurassic World: Dominion) and Derek Connolly (Kong: Skull Island), you would likely expect a gritty, hard-nosed action thriller. But if I were to add that this film also starred Nick Mohammed (Ted Lasso) and Omid Djalili (The Infidel), and also had Ben Ashenden (Ghosts) and Alexander Owen (Dreaming Whilst Black) as writers and Tom Kingsley (Smoggie Queens) as a director, confusion may well set in. Deep Cover embraces that confusion with its London-based action/crime comedy and savours placing actors into roles that subvert expectations in creating laughs as a band of unwitting and pretty damn useless improv comedians find themselves recruited as undercover agents.
Of course, it’s well-known that improv comedy is one of the most challenging skills to pull off in front of a live audience, and Deep Cover makes this clear from the outset with the quote, “In comedy, as in battle, you must be prepared to die if you want to kill.” Improv comedians like undercover cops must stay in character, whatever is thrown at them, and remain calm under pressure. However, not all improv comedians are made to withstand such pressure or have the talent to handle it.
Enter Kat, a relaxed, loving, and failed improv comedian who now runs coaching lessons at a local club. Kat knows her career isn’t going anywhere fast, but coaching enables her to encourage others and possibly, one day, find that one comedian who hits gold. Then there’s Marlon, a student of Kat’s who truly believes he is Laurence Olivier and commits 100% to a method approach with little success beyond a few commercials. Finally, there’s Hugh, a socially awkward IT Manager everyone steps on at work. Hugh isn’t bothered about comedy; he just wants friends to show him what to do in social situations.
They are certainly not the trio you would expect to suddenly find themselves recruited by a hard-nosed cop near retirement (Sean Bean). But Billing is keen to recruit improv comedians to bust small-time criminals selling knock-off cigarettes, and possibly more, in local corner shops around South-East London. What could go wrong? I hear you ask, well, pretty much everything, as Kat, Hugh, and Marlon quickly find themselves in the den of the local drug lord (Considine) working under the kingpin Metcalfe (McShane). Can this trio hone their improv skills to bring down the biggest drug racket in South-East London, or will they fall at the first hurdle? And where the hell is the backup from Billing and the Met Police? Deep Cover is a giggle from start to finish, with stand-out performances from an ensemble who are clearly having fun with every aspect of the sharp, occasionally slapstick and relentlessly farcical screenplay.
Let’s face it: in a world as miserable as ours, we all need a good laugh, and while some aspects of Deep Cover feel slightly rushed, there is no denying it carries enough laughs across its one hour and thirty-nine minutes to ensure you walk away with a broad smile as the credits role. Therefore, it is sad that Deep Cover has been relegated to a straight-to-streaming release on Prime Video, denying people the chance to laugh with others in a theatre. Yes, people will laugh at home with family or friends, but the whole point of a comedy film is to experience the theatrical effect of shared laughter with strangers as an audience gobbles their popcorn and sips their drinks.
The problem with streaming is that with ever-growing lists of “content”, movies like Deep Cover quickly get lost in the maze of “what to watch” algorithms. I sincerely hope Deep Cover avoids this straight-to-streaming trap and finds an audience because while it may not hit every comedic mark it aims for, this is one ensemble comedy that playfully and skillfully takes the foundations of the classic British crime thriller and chisels away at them with creativity, bags of humour and more than a few stand-out comedic performances, including a delightfully hammy performance from Bloom, that is both unexpected and joyous. If you want a fun, devilishly dark, fast-paced comedic joy ride on a Friday night, you won’t go far wrong with Deep Cover.
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