Deep Cover (2025) Review — Bryce Dallas Howard and Orlando Bloom Star in this Total Retread

Deep Cover is an action-comedy retread, recycled from '90s comedies to feed today’s demanding streaming platforms — platforms that, like sharks, must keep eating and moving to survive. Amazon’s Prime Video is no exception; flooding its service with constant new content built on predictable, proven formulas, they believe carry little risk.

The latest example stars Opie’s daughter, an actor surviving off the fumes of a once-fantastical intellectual property, and another who plays the same character in everything he does. Throw them into a script you’ve seen countless times before, and you get a story that regurgitates the same beats, themes, visual styles, and character types — Deep Cover's originality is yawn-inducing.

Prime Video's Deep Cover Review & Synopsis

Orlando Bloom, Bryce Dallas Howard, and Nick Mohammad star in Deep Cover (2025) | Image Via Amazon MGM Studios

The story follows three down-on-their-luck people looking to keep their heads above water—financially, professionally, and personally. You have Hugh (Ted Lasso's Nick Mohammed), who works in the information technology department of a London-based boiler room–style brokerage firm. He has no friends, is looked down upon by his coworkers, and has little joy in life.

You then have Marlon (Gran Turismo's Orlando Bloom), a serious method actor stuck in commercials, trying to break out into grittier roles, but forced to take a seasonal job dressed as a holiday elf during the shopping season, handing out flyers outside a mall. He is let go by his agent after finding the darker side of a character in a male enhancement commercial. Marlon is like Sean Penn, but way more intense—and with even less of a sense of humor, which is saying something.

Hugh and Marlon attend the same improv class, taught by an out-of-work actor, Kate (Bryce Dallas Howard), who has had even less acting success than Gene Cousineau. Hugh catches the bug when he accidentally makes the class laugh. With Kate's visa expiring in a few weeks, she feels humiliated that her friends have moved on to great success, and two of her young students have found agents after a single showcase.

Prime Video's Deep Cover Follows the Streaming Playbook Step-by-Step

Soon, they are recruited by a Detective Constable (Sean Bean), an undercover cop who enlists them to infiltrate the Long gangland organization by impersonating criminals. Before long, they’re rubbing elbows with everyone from low-level soldiers (MobLand's Paddy Considine) to the head of the entire crime syndicate (Ballerina's Ian McShane), hoping they can survive the "improvisation" they've gotten themselves into.

Deep Cover was directed by Tom Kingsley, who has had great critical success with such films as Black Pond and The Darkest Universe. Here, he works with a script from a headache-inducing list of names, including Colin Trevorrow, Derek Connolly, Ben Ashenden, and Alexander Owen, which suggests the script went through so many rewrites it has been watered down from a unique and interesting Guy Ritchie piece to a directionless, vulgar action comedy that is void of a point of view.

The writers all worked on the Jurassic World franchise and had a hand in the truly awful Jurassic World Dominion. This explains Howard's role in the film, and if they wrote the part for her, it would indicate they are trying to sabotage her career. The latter two writers reportedly took the original script, putting their comedic spins on it, with reasonably predictable results.

Is Prime Video's Deep Cover Worth Watching?

The only reason Prime Video's Deep Cover is worth watching is for Orlando Bloom, who discovers a knack for comedy we didn't know he had. Bloom's Marlon is like Sean Penn, but way more intense—and with even less of a sense of humor, which is saying something. As the improv class scenes prove, when you don't play for laughs, the method makes the scenes that much funnier.

However, Deep Cover is just too predictable, uneven in tone, and hardly takes any chances with its script. Then, when you sprinkle in sobering moments of crude violence, jokes cannot build off each other, making for a far more pleasant experience than intended. This comedy leans for too much on-premise, similar characters, yes even Bloom, and creative crutches to be worth your time.

You can stream Deep Cover only on Prime Video on June 12th!

Grade: 3/10