Epitomized by Sean Connery and his successors in the role of James Bond, screen spies have typically been played by suave, dashing men. Can you imagine frumpy, corpulent Melissa McCarthy pressed into duty as a CIA field agent? That is the central conceit of the new parody, Spy.
As the film kicks off, Susan Cooper (McCarthy) is a desk-bound CIA agent. She never ventures far from the basement of agency headquarters in Langley, Va. In an opening scene, we witness the exquisite synergy between Cooper and tuxedo-clad field agent Bradley Fine (Jude Law). As Fine is dispatched on perilous, international assignments, Cooper monitors him on video surveillance equipment. She’s in Fine’s hidden earpiece, warning him about unseen risks lurking around every corner.
Of course, Cooper is quite smitten with her handsome cohort. Fine is genuinely appreciative of Cooper’s hyper-efficient contributions to his successful ventures. However, it never occurs to him that there could be any romantic connection. Instead, Fine routinely relegates Cooper to discharging menial tasks, including the unpleasant duty of firing the Latino gardener, Jaime (Jaime Pacheco), for inadvertently breaking the sprinkler heads with his lawn mower. Instead of firing Jaime, soft-hearted Cooper simply mows the lawn on Jaime’s behalf so that he can keep his job.
The plot thickens when Bulgarian arms dealer Tihomir Boyanov (Raad Rawi) acquires a nuclear bomb and plans to sell it to the highest bidder. Fine tracks down Boyanov to his subterranean lair. At gunpoint, Fine demands that Boyanov disclose the bomb’s location. Unfortunately, Fine is sensitive to airborne allergens. When Fine sneezes, his gun fires, leaving Boyanov with a bullet hole to the head. Whoops! The decedent’s daughter, Rayna (Rose Byrne), avenges her father by shooting Fine as Cooper looks on helplessly.
Following a memorial service for Fine, CIA Deputy Director Elaine Crocker (Allison Janney) needs a plan to recover the bomb, which has now fallen into the hands of Rayna. Cooper gets the job. Lampooning the high-tech equipment handed out by Q to 007, Cooper receives a dog whistle, stool softener and hemorrhoid patches. Off she goes to Rome, Paris and Budapest. How will she fare?
After disastrous outings in Identity Thief and Tammy, Spy represents a nice career bounce-back for McCarthy. Here, she is reunited with writer/director Paul Feig (of “Freaks & Geeks”). The latter extracted the best from McCarthy in her Oscar-nominated breakthrough role in Bridesmaids and in The Heat, her subsequent collaboration with Sandra Bullock. Feig also contributes a gleeful screenplay, which reflects his appreciation for tropes of the spy genre and for feminist gender politics.
Dour Jason Statham steals many scenes as Rick Ford, Cooper’s agency rival. He plays a caricature of the uber-macho action hero that he has portrayed in The Transporter and Expendables franchises. Ford brags that when one of his arms was ripped off, he sewed it back on with his other hand. Statham’s intermittent verbal confrontations with McCarthy are a hoot. Spy is a hilarious spoof of the genre, which features a subtext of female empowerment.
Spy
***1/2
Melissa McCarthy
Jude Law
Jason Statham
Directed by Paul Feig
R
