Spy (2015)

Review:

“The name’s Cooper, Susan Cooper.” Move over James Bond, there’s a new superstar special agent in town.

Before watching Spy, I must admit that I didn’t really have any expectations either way. I think this is probably because the film wasn’t particularly pushed prior to release, but I have learnt that having tons of adverts adorning buses and billboards is not necessarily an indication of the whether a film is going to rock our world (Spider-Man 3 still being the best example of this… yikes!). However, write/director Paul Feig (Bridesmaids [2011] and The Heat [2013]), reunited with comedy queen Melissa McCarthy, provided me with 120 minutes of top-notch silliness that luckily had plenty of heart and soul to go along with it. Plus, as I’m sure has become apparent to you all, I love me a strong female character, and Melissa McCarthy as Susan ‘Coop’ Cooper does not let me down. Hooray!

  

Assumedly bashful and sweet-natured CIA agent Susan Cooper is initially deskbound and behind-the-scenes, but after her fellow agents’ identities are compromised, she steps up and takes her place in the field proclaiming in an attitude, “anything you can do, I can do better”. With everyone’s assumption being that Coop’s main strength for this super dangerous mission is that she’s “invisible”, she ends up becoming the brilliance of this film. Not only does Spy take delight in ridiculing the whole machismo of the popular Spy thrillers, Feig is unafraid to take Hollywood conventions (and his male characters) down a peg or two. Any societal expectations or jokes aimed at or about a woman like Coop end up being thrown back into the faces of those idiotic enough to make them. Susan Cooper is certainly an agent with agency, showing up the incompetency of those around her. She is able to easily and wittily undermine gruff, tough Agent Rick Ford (Jason Statham) during a clichéd monologue of the formidable situations he’s endured, which is delivered, of course, in a very manly and red-blooded manner. Our other lead male secret agent is Bradley Fine (Jude Law) – who is Fine by name, fine by nature. Clearly a parody of our home-grown 007, he is suave, handsome, and quite frankly, a bit of an arse. As someone who has never been a fan of the James Bond character (sorry to offend you Bondaholics, but at least you have Spectre to look forward to later this year), this portrayal was pretty satisfying for me.

Instead of the usual storylines of women needing to have some sort of physical transformation in order to display how they have positively evolved throughout the film, McCarthy’s character has the freedom to simply grow into the “badass” agent she deserves to be. A playful two fingers up the at these kind of norms was most definitely with the secret weapons given to Coop – items that could be seen as essentials in any stereotypical spinster’s handbag, they doubled as fierce tools fit for any brutal undercover agent. My personal favourite was the rape whistle that was actually a blow-dart - I wonder when those’ll be available on Amazon?!

Whilst Spy remains a parody of the many, many Spy thrillers out in the Moviesphere, it is still full to the brim of extremely well choreographed action sequences alongside the laughs. Many may feel that that Feig has thrown in certain violent and foul-mouthed scenes so as to appease those purely looking for action and a chuckle, rather than to observe the strong females showing up the incompetency of their male counterparts (à la me), but luckily as someone with a rather sweary vernacular, this just became part of the fun. Spy, like Bridesmaids and The Heat, was an unexpected and pleasant surprise, making me to look forward to the new Ghostbusters reboot. It may not go down in the Almanac of Film History as the most progressive and forward-thinking film, but for Hollywood, at least it’s a motherf**king step forwards.