‘Role Play’ Movie Review: Cuoco and Oyelowo Do What They Can With Risk-Averse Material
Photo from Prime Video
From Jeremy Kibler
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: one-half of a seemingly ordinary married couple secretly moonlights as a trained assassin! Oh, the deception! Once again (not even a full month after The Family Plan), Role Play plays that same old “So I Married a [Fill in the Blank]” chestnut, but at least Kaley Cuoco and David Oyelowo, as well as two notable (if underutilized) supporting players, try and elevate an exceedingly dull script. Just imagine if True Lies relied entirely on Arnold Schwarzenegger to be funny without giving him funny things to say.
Though married for seven years, Dave Brackett (Oyelowo) might not actually know his wife, Emma (Cuoco), as well as he thinks (or even her real name). They live happily with two kids in New Jersey, but when Emma is out of town in Nebraska on business as a marketeer, she’s actually assigned to kill someone somewhere around the globe for money. Those double-life jobs must really pay the bills. To spice things up (and for Emma to make up for forgetting their wedding anniversary), the couple decides to check into a luxury Manhattan hotel and role play. Instead, Dave is late, while Emma sits at the bar, only to get hit on by Bob Kellerman (Bill Nighy), who turns out to be her bounty hunter. One dead body later, Emma must race to Europe and settle up with a secret organization, all while keeping Dave and her kids safe.
Written by Seth Owen and directed by Thomas Vincent, Role Play begins as a surprisingly decent, never-too-wacky action-thriller/domestic drama hybrid until succumbing to the routine. This is another one of those competently made but minimum-effort projects where the leads are forced to prop up an underwhelming script that almost but ultimately doesn’t take many risks. Cuoco and Oyelowo are likable together, and it’s nice to see both actors playing more against type; she slits throats in Germany when she’s not making blueberry pancakes back in Jersey and he’s a sweetly aloof everyman grilling pineapple chicken for the fam.
If you’ve followed Cuoco’s TV work in both The Big Bang Theory and The Flight Attendant, you know she contains multitudes, and here, she is charismatic and equipped to play a capable assassin posing as a mother and wife. This is like her Red Sparrow sans “whore school” or the Natasha Fatale accent. Oyelowo, always an excellent actor with undeniable gravitas, even sells the appropriate emotions when Dave discovers his wife’s true profession. When getting to act overwhelmed and incredulous, he’s pretty amusing in an understated way (“Then take a class!” he says to Emma when she drops the bomb on him and complains how she doesn’t know how to do anything else).
The first act is engaging enough and crackles with some tension. The scene between Emma and Dave with a relentlessly gregarious stranger (Nighy) at the hotel bar is easily the film’s best. Cuoco, only under her role-playing date name and in a ginger wig, doesn’t miss a beat when bantering with Nighy (the way she annunciates “Bob” is pitch-perfect). Then Oyelowo’s Dave/“Jack Dawson” cuts in, only to make the unpredictability of the scene come to a boil. We know what Emma knows, and Dave is completely in the dark but still thinks this older gentleman is just trying to shag his wife. The incident that follows seems to be directing things in a more compelling fashion for this formula. It’s actually when International Task Force Agent Carver (Connie Nielsen), who knows everything there is to know about Emma, shows up to interrogate Dave that the film gets less interesting.
Without going far enough with the relationship drama or sharpening up the humor, Role Play never works as anything more than an acceptable streaming distraction. The few chase and action sequences that the film offers are slickly executed with coherent shooting and fluid editing (and absent of the airless CGI that was all over the similarly plotted Ghosted). Otherwise, it does nothing unexpected and then just ends. Seriously, this thing seems to set up for a flash-forward scene after a dud of a quip, but the end credits roll instead and we all shrug.
Role Play isn’t unwatchable by any means, but it had the potential to not be forgettable and aggressively fine.
Rating: 2.5/5
Role Play is now streaming on Prime Video.
