Deep Cover: Hilariously perilous role-playing

Deep Cover (2025) • View trailer

3.5 stars (out of five). Rated R, for violence, drug use and frequent profanity

Available via: Amazon Prime

By Derrick Bang

This film’s premise is irresistible, and the execution is a hoot.

 

The four scripters — Derek Connolly, Colin Trevorrow, Ben Ashenden and Alexander Owen — concocted a sharp comedy thriller with plenty of mirthful, rat-a-tat dialogue. Director Tom Kingsley and editor Mark Williams maintain a lively pace, and Daniel Pemberton’s score adds just the right flourish.

 

Fly (Paddy Considine, far left) is impressed by what his new colleagues — from left,
Kat (Bryce Dallas Howard), Hugh (Nick Mohammed) and Marlon (Orlando Bloom) —
have accomplished ... even if he doesn't entirely trust them.

The casting is inspired, and the players inhabit their parts with élan. At first blush, the three stars seem like unlikely collaborators, but they deftly play to each other’s strengths.

Kat (Bryce Dallas Howard), a wannabe stand-up comic, has taken solace in leading improv lessons for other would-be superstars; she’s sweet, patient and nurturing. One of her students is the über-serious Marlon (Orlando Bloom), who has embraced Stanislavski’s method approach to an unfortunate degree, and believes himself the next Robert De Niro. Even so, the poor guy can’t do better than TV commercials.

 

Elsewhere, shy IT wonk Hugh (Nick Mohammed) hasn’t the faintest concept of social skills, and frequently is ridiculed by his co-workers. He stumbles into Kat’s class one day, hoping to learn the fine art of casual conversation, and become more at ease with himself.

 

Unknown to all, Kat and her students have been observed by veteran London police officer Billings (Sean Bean), who has hatched an audacious plan for a sting operation. Knowing that bad guys can smell undercover cops a mile away, Billings proposes that Kat, Marlon and Hugh work as a team to help nail small-potatoes criminals selling knock-off cigarettes.

 

Intrigued by the challenge — and also excited by the low-level danger — they agree.

 

When they show up the next day, Kat has tarted up, going for tough-chick street sleaze, accompanied by a sassy attitude. Marlon looks, sounds and behaves like a dangerous mob enforcer, while Nick ... looks like himself. Which is to say, a nerdy accountant, prompting a long-suffering sigh from Billings.

 

Their assignment is simple: Stroll into a nearby bodega, ask the guy behind the counter for the “cheap stuff,” complete the purchase, and depart.

 

What could possibly go wrong?

 

Quite a lot, as events go down, because Kat and Marlon are too eager to go off-book, repeatedly relying on her “Yes, and...?” class exercise. As a result, they snag an invite to make a major buy from local drug baron Fly (Paddy Considine), which exasperates and delights Billings.

 

But although Kat and Marlon look and sound like who they’re supposed to be, Fly regards Hugh warily, questioning his appearance. “That’s why we call him Squire,” Kat quickly interjects, while Hugh smiles awkwardly.

 

In a film laden with laugh-out-loud moments, none is funnier than Mohammed’s nervous body language and mounting terror, when Fly insists that Hugh test the purity of the product.

Maggie Moore(s): Dire doings writ dark

Maggie Moore(s) (2023) • View trailer

3.5 stars (out of five). Rated R, for violence, drug use, fleeting nudity, sexual candor and relentless profanity

Available via: Amazon Prime and other streaming services

By Derrick Bang

Director John Slattery and writer Paul Bernbaum are in Coen Brothers territory — most particularly 1996’s Fargo — with this macabre little crime thriller.

 

Rita (Tina Fey) and Sanders (Jon Hamm) would have a hard time connecting under
the best of circumstances; it's even more difficult in the middle of a murder investigation.

The tone veers wildly between larkish and horrifying, the occasional dollops of humor in a dark-dark-dark vein. The story is anchored by star Jon Hamm, note-perfect as an amiable local sheriff trying to focus on his job, but still emotionally reeling from his wife’s untimely death a year ago.

The setting is contemporary, in a small New Mexico desert community. (Filming took place in and around Albuquerque.) A prologue finds Sanders and his deputy, Reddy (Nick Mohammed, immediately recognized from TV’s Ted Lasso), examining the body of a woman killed in a motel parking lot. When ID reveals her name — Maggie Moore — Sanders and Reddy exchange a perplexed look.

 

We then flash back 10 days, and meet Jay Moore (Micah Stock) a hapless schnook who runs a Subway-style chain eatery called Castle Subs, and is unlucky enough to have a wife (Maggie) whose expensive tastes are bleeding him white. As a means of staving off creditors, he has been getting rancid, long-expired meats and cheeses from Liberty Bell Foods, a dodgy outfit run by local slimeball Tommy T (Derek Basco, appropriately smarmy), in exchange for child pornography (!).

 

Jay and Maggie’s frequent screaming matches have been overheard by their next-door neighbor, Rita Grace (Tina Fey).

 

When Jay decides that killing his wife would be the best solution to his financial woes, Tommy T sends him to Kosco (Happy Anderson), a hulking mute whose portion of all conversations are written on yellow legal paper, which he immediately shreds before moving on to his next reply.

 

We don’t see what happens next, but — a day or two later — Reddy discovers a burned-out car with a body inside: charred to little more than a skeleton. When she’s identified as Maggie Moore, Sanders and Reddy naturally have a pointed chat with Jay, whose dismay seems genuine enough.

 

Sanders subsequently learns of the marital strife from Rita, and their mildly flirty banter suggests possibilities. Hamm and Fey are terrific together; her lively sense of smart-assed mischief is well balanced by his world-weary amusement. This role is solidly in Hamm’s wheelhouse, and just as entertaining as his handling of the sardonic title role in last year’s Confess, Fletch. He excels at the deadpan I-don’t-believe-a-word-you’re-saying expression.

Christopher Robin: Endearing, but uneven

Christopher Robin (2018) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rated PG-13, for no particular reason
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 8.3.18

I’ve long regarded title credits as a strong indication of quality; a director who cares enough to insist upon clever, stylish or (in some manner) unusual credits, generally can be counted upon to give his film the same attention to detail.

Desperate to prevent passersby from realizing that Pooh is a stuffed bear who nonetheless
walks and talks, Christopher (Ewan McGregor) begs his childhood friend to "play taking
a nap."

In that respect, then, director Marc Forster’s Christopher Robin begins auspiciously. An extended prolog is lovingly and warmly animated from the E.H. Shepard illustrations in A.A. Milne’s original Winnie the Pooh books; the sequence also incorporates flipped pages laden with the correct type font. In all respects, it’s like we viewers jump into the book itself and become part of what follows, much in the manner of Jasper Fforde’s delightful Thursday Next novels.

This lengthy, period-appropriate introduction also establishes the firm bond between young Christopher Robin (Orton O’Brien) and his half-dozen plush animal friends, all seemingly hand-stitched, as if by some doting parent. They’ve organized a party in the Hundred Acre Wood, but the occasion is somber: Christopher Robin is heading off to boarding school. The mood is pure “Puff, the Magic Dragon.”

These sweetly animated characters are voiced sublimely, their note-perfect dialog — here, and throughout the entire film — impeccably crafted to match Milne’s blend of innocence and gentle playfulness (with numerous quotes lifted directly from the page). We can’t help being both charmed and saddened; the sweet sorrow of this impending parting is almost more than can be withstood.

Then the movie proper kicks in, and the mood is ... well, badly compromised, if not completely shattered.

The script — credited, with eyebrow-raising concern, to five different hands — is a patchwork mess stitched together with far less care than that given to its animated stars. The plot is a clumsy mash-up of Steven Spielberg’s Hook and Disney’s Mary Poppins — both centering around an adult who has lost track of his childhood sense of wonder — blended with numerous un-subtle nods to the three Disney Winnie the Pooh cartoon shorts produced between 1966 and ’74.

To make matters even worse, this film’s (mostly) soothing tone often is marred by the destructive slapstick sequences that infected so many of Disney’s insufferably stupid late 1960s and early ’70s live-action comedies. The sudden shift in tone can cause whiplash.

In a nutshell, these characters — human and otherwise — are far better than the derivative, wafer-thin and disappointing story into which they’ve been dumped.