TL;DR – There are some moments when the film shines. However, there is a lot of space in between those moments filled with missed opportunities.

Post-Credit Scene – There is no post-credit scene.

Disclosure – I paid for the Amazon Prime service that viewed this film.  

Role Play Review –

In the Spy and Spy-adjacent world, one of the core narratives that we see is when a spy’s family does not know what they do for a day job. The most famous is probably True Lies, but we see a lot of them moving from the more comical to the more serious, depending on the vibe that they want. That is if you can choose a vibe.  

So to set the scene, on the surface, the Brackett family is your perfectly normal middle-American suburban unit. The father, Dave (David Oyelowo), is an architect. They have two wonderful kids, Caroline (Lucia Aliu) & Wyatt (Regan Bryan-Gudgeon), and oh, by the way, when Emma (Kaley Cuoco) says she is going out of town to work cooperate management, she actually is a very successful assassin. Emma wants to have some time at home, but her handler, Raj (Rudi Dharmalingam), wants her back out in the field. After Emma forgets their anniversary, they decide to have a fun night out where they pretend to be two strangers meeting in a bar. One long ride stuck in the tunnel and the poor advances of Bob (Bill Nighy), and it looks like the night might be a bit of a mess. It would be the wrong time for someone’s cover to get blown.   

While this film did have its issues, that is not to say there was nothing that worked. Kaley Cuoco and David Oyelowo do have this awkward chemistry with each other that makes you feel that they are an old married couple. Which makes the twenty minutes when they make the most of that very engaging to watch. Part of this is because Cuoco and Oyelowo have fantastic physical comedy chops, and when they are firing together, it works, as we see with the delightful Bill Nighy. Also, I would love to live in that villain’s lair.  

Unfortunately for the movie, the way it is structured means that the moment we get our reveal with Bob, the film loses all momentum for a good twenty minutes. It is something that it struggles to recover from until Gwen Carver (Connie Nielsen) reveals her hand. Structurally, most of the film is not actually mining the strengths that it has on hand. Carver is not a particularly strong villain, providing some lacklustre motivation. The action components are acceptable but fleeting, but there was nothing that memorable there.

In the end, do we recommend Role Play? Well, it is not bad. However, you can feel all the missed opportunities. They didn’t make the most out of their strengths, and it shows. If you liked Role Play, we would recommend to you FUBAR.

By Brian MacNamara: You can follow Brian on Twitter Here, when he’s not chatting about Movies and TV, he’ll be talking about International Relations, or the Solar System.

Have you watched Role Play?, let us know what you thought in the comments below, feel free to share this review on any of the social medias and you can follow us Here. Check out all our past reviews and articles Here, and have a happy day. 

Credits – All images were created by the cast, crew, and production companies of Role Play
Directed by – Thomas Vincent
Written by – Seth Owen
Music by – Rael Jones
Cinematography by – Maxime Alexandre
Edited by – Gareth C. Scales
Production/Distribution Companies – Amazon MGM, StudioCanal, The Picture Company, Canal+ & Amazon Prime.
Starring – Kaley Cuoco, David Oyelowo, Lucia Aliu, Regan Bryan-Gudgeon, Rudi Dharmalingam, Connie Nielsen, Simon Delaney & Bill Nighy with Sonita Henry, Jade Dregorius, Julia Schunevitsch, Stephanie Levy-Jones, Steffen Jung, Betty Kaplan, Dee Yoon, Matthias Schmidt, Angus McGruther & Dominic Holmes.  
Rating – Australia: M; United States: R