‘Deep Cover' Review: Fighting Crime With Improv

New York Times

12-06-2025

The movie opens with a furious cops-and-robbers car chase through London that eventually draws in a helicopter. Flying low, the chopper zips past a busy brokerage floor where Hugh (Nick Mohammed), a weary drone, watches it in awe and terror. In a relatively short amount of time he'll be drawn into an underworld that will place him in between lines of fire from opposite sides of the law.
In 'Deep Cover,' directed by Tom Kingsley, Hugh determines to boost his social confidence by taking a course in improv comedy run by Kat (Bryce Dallas Howard), whose chipper exterior barely masks her befuddlement at how she wound up in her position. Orlando Bloom plays Marlon, who wants to hone the extemporizing 'skills' that his TV-ad-booking agent wished he would bury. The three are soon scouted by Sean Bean's hard-bitten cop Billings, who enlists them to run a small sting.
The gang get so carried away trying to entrap a low-level dealer that they wind up being taken for major players, and infiltrating a network overseen by a relatively amiable Paddy Considine and a typically no-nonsense Ian McShane. The plot convolutions test the trio's survival skills — and their improv chops.
Nowadays crime comedies don't so much toggle between horror and hilarity as try to intermingle them: One example is a scene in which a corpse needs to be chopped up and disposed of, and poor Hugh is handed the chain saw. Humor is also derived from the fact that the crew is frequently called upon to ingest various intoxicants, legal and taboo. The ensemble is packed with seasoned acting professionals across the board, who more than sell their drunk scenes and deliver more than a few laughs on their way to redemption.
Deep CoverRated R for language, corpse dismemberment, other violence, crime in general. Running time: 1 hour 49 minutes. Watch on Prime Video.