DEEP COVER (Tribeca 2025) – Review by Sherin Nicole

Deep Cover took me back to the height of 90s and early 2000s action comedies. In that spirit, let’s start with our best Movie Trailer Man voice: What happens when “yes, and…” meets “come out with your hands up”?

Director Tom Kingsley (Black Pond, Doctor Who), answers that question with Deep Cover, a deliciously crime-y romp that proves improv skills might just save your life—or get you killed by drug gangs. The film follows the perfectly cast trio of Bryce Dallas Howard as an improv instructor whose “just go with it” mantra is about to be put to the ultimate test. Alongside Orlando Bloom, a method actor who never breaks character, and Nick Mohammed an endearingly nebbish IT guy with a foul mouth. What starts as an opportunity to stretch their talent by helping the hard-nosed cop, DS Billings (Sean Bean), with a simple—and supposedly safe—sting operation spirals into a full-blown London gang war. Let’s just say our trio’s acting is too good and everybody gets greedy. Kingsley pours his signature blend of character-driven comedy and progressively bonkers situations into an action-buddy-comedy that is carefully crafted and gloriously unhinged.

The glee of Deep Cover lies in how it leverages the rules of improv comedy against the gritty backdrop of London’s criminal underbelly. As our trio’s real lives begin bleeding into their undercover personas (and vice versa), the film transforms into something far more compelling than the action comedies we’ve gotten lately. Several scenes with Howard’s Kat and her well-meaning friends go sideways when they’re trying to get her out of trouble and she’s trying to keep them from attaining bullet holes.

The stellar British supporting cast, including Bean and Ian McShane (who clearly relishes getting dirty in this sandbox), levels the proceedings up while never undermining the film’s wickedly keen sense of humor. Kingsley, Howard, Bloom, and Mohammed make ensemble work feel like four-part harmony, with a delightful balance between the leads’ chemistry and the seasoned character actors who are making their lives increasingly treacherous. Extra applause for a platinum blonde Sonoya Mizuno as Shosh—a comedic version of Pom Klementieff’s Paris in M:I Dead Reckoning but with a sweet n’ saltiness that’s distinctly hers, and Nneka Okoye as K-Lash, a gangster queen whose machete is always bigger than yours. Best, you remember that.

This isn’t C-I-N-E-M-A, it’s fun and feisty and frothy with the emotions, stunts, and character development hitting a snappy rhythm. From a script by Derek Connolly & Colin Trevorrow, Ben Ashenden & Alexander Owen, Deep Cover feels as spontaneous as the improv it’s spoofing. Pulling off the feat of making us care about these lunatics—yes, even the bad ones—while laughing at their increasingly absurd predicaments. Howard, Bloom, and Mohammed’s chemistry crackles with an authentic awkwardness and camaraderie that makes their transformation from strangers to accidental gangsters hilarious and also kind of sweet. The film’s action sequences, developed in collaboration with producer Colin Trevorrow, deliver genuine thrills that work because of the character-driven comedy at its core (not against it).

Let’s close this out by bringing our 90s-era Movie Trailer voice back: IN A WORLD cluttered with uninteresting and uneven action-comedies, Deep Cover proves sometimes the best way to write a story AND survive in the criminal underworld is to say “Yes, and…” just go with it, and hope for the best.

That worked out pretty well for Deep Cover.