On June 12, Prime Video premiered the crime comedy «Deep Cover», where Bryce Dallas Howard, Orlando Bloom and Nick Mohammed, who you may remember from the hit sports drama «Ted Lasso». What kind of adventures await the above-mentioned company and how interesting it is to watch them — we share our thoughts in the review below.
Genre crime comedy
Director Tom Kingsley
Starring Bryce Dallas Howard, Orlando Bloom, Nick Mohammed, Ian McShane, Paddy Considine, Sean Bean, Sonoya Mizuno
Premiere Prime Video
Year of release 2025
Website IMDb
Kat Boyles is an unsuccessful stand-up comedian who teaches improvisation in London and no longer hopes to ever succeed. Marlon Swift dreams of a career as Robert De Niro, but instead of landing prominent roles, he is forced to settle for humiliating commercial appearances. Hugh is an indecisive employee of the IT department of a company in the capital who finds it difficult to establish contact with others.
Through a set of circumstances, these three misfits find themselves recruited by police detective Graham Billings to expose local crooked dealers. But the trio gets used to their roles, which leads them to the deepest possible cover, reaching the top of London’s criminal underworld. Now the unfortunate artists will have to worry not only about how to get into character, but also about how to keep the crime bosses from finding out about their already precarious situation.
Today, the world become overly sensitiveand humor — cautious, because studios and streaming services prefer to follow the rules of the game and not take unnecessary risks. As a result, the audience has simply lost really clever and funny comedies like «The Hangover» (2009). Occasionally, we still come across such finds as «The Studio», but these appearances are sporadic and for every good comedy series there is, for example, a whole series of opuses of varying degrees of outright idiocy with some John Cena — remember «Vacation Friends», «Freelance», «Ricky Stanicky» or «Jackpot!».
«Deep Cover» — is also far from being an outstanding comedy, and in the heyday of the genre, it would have seemed like something mediocre. However, its creators chose the only right approach — to make their audience laugh honestly. And nowadays, it would almost be considered a feat.
Yes, the plot is frankly ridiculous, starting with the sergeant’s address to the improvisers and ending with how easily they manage to get away with it. Yes, sometimes there are not enough jokes and I would like to have more reasons to laugh. But in between the ridiculous episodes, there is still an extremely important, vital space for genuine laughter. For this, especially in our current realities, you forgive a lot.
It’s noteworthy that another, albeit highly comedic, London crime showdown did not feature Guy Ritchie. But with Paddy Considine, who apparently didn’t have to change his clothes once again after playing in the recent «MobLand» (this one was already with Richie on board). And in parallel to appearing on the big screens in «Ballerina» Ian McShane appears here with an unnaturally snow-white smile, like that of Ross Geller. But the most remarkable thing about the actors is the reunion of Boromir and Legolas from the legendary «The Lord of the Rings» Peter Jackson, that is, Sean Bean and Orlando Bloom.
And so all this good company makes surprisingly good company — venerable criminals who are best kept away from on the one hand, and a trio of fools who show up for a gang fight with toy guns — on the otherIt’s a special kind of pleasure to watch Bloom’s character, who is quite an actor, pretend to be a cool, crazy and fearless thug (it’s hard to imagine what he was going to do with an iron). Or the way Nick Mohammed’s character, a suspiciously polite slob who wouldn’t hurt a fly, is forced to do several lines of coke in one go.
As a result, we get an absurd in terms of plot, but at the same time finally a normal, human comedy ̶w̶i̶t̶h̶ ̶c̶o̶c̶a̶i̶n̶e̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶s̶t̶r̶i̶p̶p̶e̶r̶s̶.̶
The filmmakers are not trying to represent any current trends or agendas. They do not intend to practice satire, which is quite popular today but not always successful, and they certainly do not intend to stoop to the level of primitive humor, as in the same films with Sina. They are as honest as possible with the viewer and do not pretend to be anything more than a call «hey, friend, we suggest you just have fun in a nice company on a weekend evening». Unfortunately, they didn’t succeed, but there is a great lack of such movies nowadays.