Kat is an improv comedy teacher beginning to question if she’s missed her shot at success. When an undercover cop offers her the role of a lifetime, she recruits two of her students to infiltrate London’s gangland by impersonating dangerous criminals.
Rated 4.5 / 5 from 1 log on Katalog
Right off the bat, this film has no business being as good as it is. Its premise is idiotic, its director an unknown of modest competence, its marketing virtually nonexistent. By all accounts it should have been buried by the algorithm, watched only by the sleepless and the indiscriminate. We discovered it by accident—forty minutes into a hopeless scroll through Netflix and Prime, our standards sinking by the minute—until, out of sheer fatigue, we clicked the first title that seemed survivable. And then, to our astonishment, it turned out to be fantastic. Orlando Bloom, of all people, emerges as the film’s quiet revelation. He possesses a real gift for physical comedy and gives a performance of surprising delicacy and control—layered, self-aware, and often very funny. Nick Mohammed, meanwhile, continues his campaign to perfect the role he’s been playing since Ted Lasso, and I can’t object; one does not scold a man for doing what he does well. The actress playing Cat is perfectly serviceable, while Ian McShane turns up with a Scottish accent so gloriously implausible it swings right back around into being believable. What carries the whole affair is its sheer good humor. The timing is good, the physical gags actually land, and—rare miracle—you find yourself liking everyone. And, when it all pans out in the end, you feel oddly grateful. They deserve it, these ridiculous idiots. But Bloom made the whole thing come to life. I had underestimated him. He seems to be undergoing the same metamorphosis that turned Hugh Grant from a floppy-haired cherub into a specialist in sleazy charm and cranky eccentricity. Grant became interesting the moment he stopped pretending to be likable. Bloom, for his part, has leaned instead into his natural station: the man of middle class and middling intelligence, vaguely ashamed of his own easy life and quietly wishing that he had suffered more. In short, the male Katy Perry: pretty, pointless, faintly tragic in his directionless and toothless search for meaning. It’s all rather appropriate.
