The one thing that immediately stands out about Spy is how violent it is. We see people get shot in the head, a bloody mist emerging from the back of their now bullet-bearing head. At one point, the main grabs a man by his lower mandible and throws him down to the ground, where he crumples into a bodily configuration that no human should ever experience. It seems worth noting that Spy, a comedy, is actually more cavalier with its violence than something like The Expendables. But this all points to how seriously the film approaches the genre. Though the plot gets lost somewhere in all that, the film deftly combines the action of the spy genre with its star’s particular brand of comedy.
Susan Cooper (Melissa McCarthy) works for the CIA, but only in a support capacity. She sits at a desk in a basement providing logistical support for superspy Bradley Fine (Jude Law), talking in his ear, using state-of-the-art equipment to warn him of threats and provide him with vital information. Fine is on the trail of an arms dealer when he is suddenly killed. It appears that the target, Reyna Boyanov (Rose Byrne), has intelligence on all of the CIA’s active field agents. With all the top agents having their covers blown, Susan volunteers to enter the field to track down Reyna and stop a nuclear arms deal.
The main strength of the film is how straight it plays things. It isn’t a parody of a spy film: it’s a spy film that just happens to be very funny. It isn’t making fun of the spy movie tropes. It is instead using them while throwing in a few extra jokes. And thus, the film is properly violent, with vicious knife fights, impaled bodies, and at one point, a horrific death involving a dissolving body part. In an interesting twist, Susan is never played as incompetent. She is actually a very good agent; it’s just that her timid personality combined with years behind a desk have robbed her of the confidence needed to go out into the field.
And so the joke isn’t that she’s a bumbling fool out there, succeeding in spite of being a real liability. The joke is that she’s a relatively normal person in a world where people get killed all the time. The joke is that she has rogue spy (played brilliantly by Jason Statham) with the best intentions following her and mucking up her operation. Also, the joke is that people keep underestimating her, including her own agency, which keeps saddling her with grotesque identities and gadgets hidden as humiliating objects.
The plot gets pretty convoluted by the end, the actual details of the arms deal getting lost somewhere in the rush to build to a climax. But the movie never stops being funny, and the action never stops being brutal and effective. Key to all this is an amazing cast of actors. Melissa McCarthy finally finds a film worthy of her talents, the role a platform for her unique combination of comedic bluster and dramatic heart. Rose Byrne is incredible as the film’s villain, the actress building a solid character out of what at first seem like a bunch of tropes. And it is worth mentioning just how funny Jason Statham is. The actor plays a heightened version of his action movie roles, delivering absurdities with a same intensity that he brings to everything else. It’s the source of many of the film’s biggest laughs.
Spy could probably use a little trimming, especially given how shaggy the plot all seems. But it does manage to pack a lot of laughs into that two-hour runtime. The film never really loses its energy, its scenes buoyed by the manic comedic energy provided by the immense talent on screen. And even when the film isn’t trying to funny, it proves to be a credible little action picture, too. Spy really loves the genre it’s playing in, and that love really shows.
My Rating:
