Spy

Spy (15)

USA 2015 120 mins Dir: Paul Feig Cast: Melissa McCarthy, Jason Statham, Rose Byrne, Jude Law, Miranda Hart, Bobby Cannavale, Alison Janney, Pete Serafinowicz

There has so far been a dearth of great live-action comedy in 2015, the genre instead being marked by barrel-scraping non-entities like Mortdecai and Unfinished Business. Thank goodness then for director Paul Feig and his regular cohort Melissa McCarthy, whose latest movie Spy hits its target as a rib-tickling, hilarious delight. It also turns out to be a surprisingly engaging action movie in its own right.

The movie succeeds where Matthew Vaughn’s self-satisfied Kingsman: The Secret Service struggled, both sending up and honouring its respective genre at the same time. This slyly subversive streak becomes immediately apparent in the slick opening sequence, as we see suave CIA agent Bradley Fine (Jude Law) infiltrate the hideout of a terrorist harbouring a nuclear bomb. However, Feig then pulls back the curtain, revealing that the real hero is in fact the person acting as Fine’s eyes and ears: fellow agent Susan Cooper (Melissa McCarthy), who is monitoring his movements whilst back at base.

Susan harbours a crush on the handsome agent, although she’s never so bold as to come out and say it. Perennially underestimated as a desk jockey, she nevertheless gets her chance to go out into the field when Fine is killed by villain Raina Boyanov (Rose Byrne), who is planning to sell the nuke to a terrorist organisation. It’s Susan’s job to go undercover in Europe and prevent a global catastrophe, her amusingly awful aliases including a Midwestern frump who resembles “someone’s homophobic aunt.” However, her mission is complicated by bolshy rival Rick Ford (Jason Statham) who has gone rogue in anger after learning that Susan has been chosen over him.

Historically, spy movies have often proved to be horrendously sexist: it’s difficult to watch some of the early Sean Connery Bonds, classics though they are, without wincing at some of the dialogue that, by today’s standards, now feels awfully misjudged. Let’s not also forget about that climactic sexual clanger from the aforementioned Kingsman. However, Feig’s movie cleverly reclaims the genre from chauvinism, affording his female characters the most dignity and depicting the men as either blitheringly incompetent or in need of assistance. Most of this of course falls on Susan, whether she’s helping Fine in the field or repeatedly showing up the brash Ford with her unassuming yet lethally impressive skills.

But although it’s a joyous surprise to watch a female-centric spy flick, Feig never labours the matter. This is at the end of the day a piece of popcorn entertainment and a fine one too, with its excellent cast all getting a chance to shine. From Rose Byrne’s deliciously imperious baddie (whose cutting insults prove to be the deadliest weapon in her arsenal) to Law’s 007-esque charmer to Miranda Hart as Susan’s bumbling best friend Nancy, every actor gets a least one big belly laugh.

The biggest surprise is perhaps Statham as the reckless Ford, continually reeling off a list of his hilariously outrageous exploits in the field, which includes ingesting 196 poisons all at once and living to tell the tale. Of course, Statham has always demonstrated a tongue-in-cheek sensibility in his action movies but here it’s applied to a much broader style of comedy, one we’ve rarely seen him do before and which he now needs to do more of, pronto.

Anchoring it all is McCarthy, who reunites with Feig for the third time following Bridesmaids, for which she was Oscar nominated, and The Heat. Brilliant a comic actress as she is, McCarthy is rarely one to radiate warmth: abrasive and confrontational is usually her approach. However, that all changes here. Susan is undoubtedly the most sympathetic and likeable character she’s played, an underdog whose endearing quest for victory gives the sense that something is genuinely at stake during the film’s numerous, well-staged action sequences, ranging from chases to a bruising kitchen fight that expertly hovers between funny and visceral. It’s a movie whose massive laughs never compromise the affection for the genre that’s being sent up. More, please.