Deep Cover (2025)
Watch it for Orlando Bloom. Seriously, he's that good.
It’s not often that life drops stuff in our laps. Well, not big stuff, anyway. Deep Cover is about an improv teacher named Kat and two of her students, Marlon and Hugh, geting swept into a big sting operation. Marlon is a sign twirler who’s also trying to get his acting career going, and Hugh is an office worker who’s constantly blamed for his co-workers’ foibles.
The sting seems simple at first: Look in on a local convenience store that appears to be selling fake cigarettes. Problem is, the store turns out to be a front for an Albanian drug gang, and Kat, Marlon, and Hugh plunge down a pretty deep rabbit hole.
Unless they want to blow their cover, they have no choice but to play along, even if it means doing a line of coke for the first time or cutting up the dead body of Billings, the cop who recruited them for the mission. Yeah. Things get weird.
Deep Cover is a oddly funny movie that’s a study in failing up. It gets pretty hard core and is definitely not a family outing, but for the rest of us it’s not bad. There were enough ludicrous situations that I laughed out loud several times.
Billings is played by Sean Bean, who, of course, played Boromir opposite Orlando Bloom’s Legolas in the Lord of the Rings movies. It’s not a spoiler to say that Billings dies, because it’s almost expected for Sean Bean to die in every one of his movies. He might as well be wearing a red Star Trek jersey.
The movie gives a lot of screen time to Orlando Bloom, and he deserves it, as drama school is very much in his pre-Tolkien wheelhouse and he plays everything to the hilt.
And I do mean everything, because Deep Cover is jammed with spoofs, including one scene in which Bloom is dressed as an elf. As in Buddy. Not Legolas. Marlon also shows up as the Pizza Knight (groan), and any flashbacks to Kingdom of Heaven are completely understandable.
Yikes. Fortunately, Bloom seems to take all these ticklish bits in stride, but I don’t know how he kept a straight face.
Bloom might get the lion’s share of the responsibilities, but his co-stars get their moments as well. Deep Cover was what Argylle should have been for Bryce Dallas Howard. She’s clearly having a ball in this movie and has great chemistry with her fellow actors.
Nick Mohammed as Hugh doesn’t do too badly, either. Every adventure story needs at least one everyman type, and Hugh doesn’t expect much out of life. At the height of the adventure the poor guy looks as if he’d like nothing better than to drop in for a pint at his local pub and then kick back at home. On the other hand, Hugh just might surprise everyone.
All that said, I wish the story had been funnier. There were so many missed opportunities for these characters to talk fast, and instead they mostly go along to get along, which, amazingly enough, the baddies completely buy. For the most part, anyway. It makes the movie feel longer than it really is.
The lack of comedy kinda makes me wonder if the actors really did improvise their way through the movie, which might explain why Orlando Bloom did so well while everyone else looks a bit freaked out.
I guess the key with Deep Cover is to just let it happen and not think about it too hard. It mostly goes down easily.
Deep Cover is currently streaming on Amazon Prime. Rated R.
My grade: B
Principal Cast: Bryce Dallas Howard, Orlando Bloom, Nick Mohammed, Sean Bean, Paddy Considine, Sonoya Mizuno, Ian McShane, Ben Ashenden, Alexander Owen, Leart Dokle, Omid Dajalili, Nneka Okoye, Freya Parker, Sophie Duker, Susannah Fielding, Ania Magliano, Assa Kanoute, Anthony Rotsa
Directed by Tom Kingsley.
Written by Derek Connolly, Colin Trevorrow, and Ben Ashenden