Every movie in the world, including those that haven’t yet been made, could benefit greatly from a spot of Bill Nighy. And never before has this theory been proven so unambiguously than in the new Prime Video movie Role Play. An instantly forgettable action-comedy in which Kaley Cuoco plays a secret assassin living a double life as a regular person with a loving husband and two kids, Role Play is a mostly lifeless experience that is practically resuscitated by Nighy in a 15-minute cameo.
He has the unique ability to command your attention even if he isn’t doing anything. If he were to be cast as a lamppost, you could count on him to make it the most evocative lamppost performance of all time. This isn’t hyperbole; while Nighy has thankfully never played an inanimate object in his career, he once voiced a villainous Pokemon. He was just as committed to that role as he was to his Oscar-nominated performance in Living. And as with most projects fortunate enough to have him on board, Nighy is the best thing about Role Play as well.
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The premise of the movie is so similar to the recent Apple release The Family Plan that it could conceivably have been birthed from the same AI prompt. There is little personality on display here, and the movie often feels untouched by human hands altogether. The plot, for the most part, is overwhelmingly dull despite the bursts of action and violence.
In the central role of the secret assassin Emma, Cuoco is playing a version of the same chipper character that she has played so often before, most obviously in the Max series The Flight Attendant. Like the person that she played in that Hitchcock ripoff, her character in Role Play is frequently on the back-foot, yanked in whichever direction that the plot takes her. Or so it seems. You can’t really question Cuoco’s commitment to the part — if anything, she’s over-committed — but you can almost sense her losing interest in the movie as it proceeds into directions that are at once predictably dull and surprisingly strange.
It begins with Emma’s cover being blown unexpectedly. Looking to spice up her love life, she and her husband Dave (David Oyelowo) decide to indulge in a bit of role-playing. They plan it out carefully. Like Phil and Claire Dunphy from Modern Family, they’d pretend to be complete strangers at a hotel bar, strike up a conversation, and take things from there. But because of Dave’s tardiness — he gets stuck in traffic on the way to the hotel — a charming older man named Bob begins making moves on Emma. This is when the movie peaks.
Once Bob exits the plot, however, Role Play nosedives almost immediately. Characters that were only just beginning to resemble real people turn into cardboard; dialogue that had just begun to sound musical becomes dry. With nowhere left to turn, writer Seth Owen and director Thomas Vincent make a half-hearted attempt to flesh out Emma’s assassin past; it is implied that she was trained like Black Widow as a child, but it is also strongly suggested that there exists a High Table-like organisation overseeing all the contract killings in the world.
Emma finds herself on the run from everybody — her old guardian, and the shadowy organisation that she once served. Briefly, she disappears from the movie altogether, and the movie follows Dave around as he deals with all this new information. Role Play underplays Emma’s deception. Even though Dave is rightly stunned at discovering that his entire married life has been a lie — there are children involved — Emma’s cavalier behaviour would have you believe that she has merely been caught shop-lifting. The movie isn’t interested in using these heightened situations to examine relationship dynamics or marital discord. Role Play isn’t as smart as Raj & DK’s The Family Man.
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But it is the sort of movie that evaporates from existence in real-time, while you’re still watching it. It’s as if Prime Video itself has hired Mark Ruffalo from Eternal Sunshine from the Spotless Mind to invade your mind and obliterate this movie to shreds. And you know the saddest part? Role Play doesn’t even put up a fight.
Role Play
Director – Thomas Vincent
Cast – Kaley Cuoco, David Oyelowo, Bill Nighy, Connie Nielsen
Rating – 2/5
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