‘Deep Cover’ Review: Bryce Dallas Howard and Orlando Bloom Play Improv Actors Working an Undercover Police Sting in a Winningly Silly Comedy 

The premise of Deep Cover is almost funny enough to carry the entire film: A trio of improv actors is recruited by the London police to go undercover on a low-level sting operation, on the theory that they can think on their feet. Fortunately, this comedy is more than its plot thanks to the hilariously straight-faced performances of Bryce Dallas Howard, Orlando Bloom and Nick Mohammed as the hapless actors who wind up embedded with dangerous London gangsters. The film approaches its action tropes with an effective sense of absurdity, but it’s the stars’ kinetic commitment to the bit that makes this relentlessly silly film work.

Howard brings energy and conviction to her role as Kat, an American in London whose visa has almost run out, along with her luck as an actor. Now she teaches improv classes to play the bills, and faces the pitying looks of her old friends.

Bloom is not exactly known for comedy (Pirates of the Caribbean aside) but is wonderfully cast here as one of Kat’s students, Marlon, an ultra-Method actor who constructs elaborate, dramatic backstories for his characters even when auditioning for a television commercial. His biggest role so far is in cheesy Medieval costume as “Pizza Knight” for a commercial, and his agent finally drops him after saying, “You’re from the Cotswolds, you’re not Al Pacino.”

Mohammed is known for comedy, notably as Nathan on Ted Lasso, and is a natural for the role of Hugh, a buttoned-up, socially inept IT guy so desperate for friends and connection he impulsively signs up for Kat’s class, even though he has the shakiest grasp of what improv is.

The scenes introducing those three are among the funniest, with the actors leaning into the earnest aspects of their characters even while reveling in their goofiness. Sean Bean soon turns up as Billings, a cop who recruits Kat and asks her to bring two colleagues along for the sting. He offers them £200 each simply for walking into a store and buying some illegal cigarettes. With her best students unavailable, she has to resort to Marlon and Hugh.

The consequences ratchet up during that sting when their often misguided improv impulses take off. They just can’t help themselves. Marlon takes on the guise of a thug named Roach and of course overplays the role. The clueless Hugh blurts out “Yes, and” at inappropriate moments, as if it’s a line of dialogue instead of the most basic improv rule. Kat is shrewder, and leaps in to try to save things, only to make them more complicated.

Before long they are meeting with a mob boss, Fly, played by Paddy Considine, who makes the character as tough as they come until it turns out he might not be so perceptive. Kat convinces him she is Bonnie, the brains of the operation, and that they are drug dealers. Marlon is the muscle, who dubs Hugh “The Squire,” the guy who tastes and authenticates the cocaine. With all that great mob access, Billings refuses to let them out of the gig, and when things go further awry they have to meet with the angry big boss (Ian McShane).

Behind the scenes of the film there is a bit of a Jurassic World reunion. Trevorrow, who directed and co-wrote that mega-hit starring Howard, wrote a version of the Deep Cover screenplay along with his Jurassic writing partner Derek Connolly more than a decade ago. Eventually Ben Ashenden and Alexander Owen were brought in to rewrite and transplant the story to London, and they also have substantial supporting roles as detectives on the trail of the improv trio. Those sleuths aren’t so smart themselves, mistakenly thinking that Kat and her gang are the masterminds behind London’s drug trafficking. In the detectives’ defense, the three do accidentally knock off a notorious assassin.

The director, Tom Kingsley, is known for the droll British television comedy Stath Lets Flats, but the tone of Deep Cover is more reminiscent of Simon Pegg and Nick Frost comedies like Hot Fuzz, with ridiculous plots and characters and consistently sharp but loose-limbed performances. Kingsley directs with confidence, even though the film sags a bit when the ever-escalating action starts to overtake the character comedy.

The action is effective enough, full of chases. In the most ludicrous, the detectives drive through narrow streets chasing Kat, Marlon and Hugh, who are trying to outrun them on rental bikes. Those scenes aren’t especially inventive, but because the film is referencing stock action tropes, they don’t need to be.

Deep Cover played at the SXSW London and Tribeca festivals shortly before dropping on Amazon Prime. Still, it arrives with relatively little hype considering its starry cast, which makes it a pleasant surprise, easy-to-watch breezy fun.