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‘Deep Cover’ Review: Bryce Dallas Howard, Orlando Bloom and Nick Mohammed Mug Their Way Through a So-So Action Comedy

Starring Bryce Dallas Howard and produced by Colin Trevorrow, Tom Kingsley's 'Deep Cover' has a solid comic idea that never explodes into hilarity.

His original screenplay, written with longtime collaborator Derek Connolly, has been given a transatlantic makeover by offbeat sketch-comedy duo Ben Ashenden and Alexander Owen, while directing duties have been handed to fellow Brit Tom Kingsley, helming his first feature since the slyly surreal indies “Black Pond” and “The Darkest Universe.” The result is a palpable mixture of Hollywood and British sensibilities, alternately brash and cozy-quirky, with the joins sometimes awkwardly felt. Their bungled first sting as a trio is one of the film’s most successful comic setpieces — Mohammed coming in at a critical moment with a perfectly mistimed “yes, and…” is a high point — though it somehow lands them accidental entry into the lair of drug kingpin Fly (Paddy Considine, barely shifting gears from his current role on TV’s “MobLand”), who’s inexplicably impressed by their bumbling thug act. Co-writers Ashenden and Owen reserve some of their wittiest dialogue for themselves, playing a straight-arrow pair of Scotland Yard detectives on the amateurs’ tail, oblivious to Billings’ scheme — though the tonal lurch between their scenes of droll, deadpan banter and the broader mugging of the core trio is jarring.

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