Action films come in all shapes and sizes. Sometimes they take the shape of a rom-com. That’s the case with the latest film from director Thomas Vincent, written by Seth W Owen, Role Play. Similar in a way to Mr. and Mrs. Smith or True Lives in a sense this movie has a lot of secrets it’s keeping from some of its characters. This is a lesser version of those two films though.

A married couple Emma and Dave Brackett (Kaley Cuoco, David Oyelowo)  decide to spice things up a bit by meeting at a hotel to have a romantic interlude after one of them has been working so much that they forgot their anniversary. When they meet up at the bar an older gentleman Bob Kellerman (Bill Nighy) has been getting in their way. He’s more than he seems as he tries to kill Cuoco’s character. She gets the better of him but this sets off a whole series of events.

There is an overlying spy game angle to this story where Rudi Dhamalingam plays a handler named Raj who helps Cuoco’s character. They work hitmen for big paydays but Gwen Carter (Connie Nielson) who works for an organization called Sovereign is fast on her heels. Cuoco’s character is living a double life as a wife and a hit woman. She tries to balance this life but it’s not easy especially when she gets noticed by the other hitmen or spies. 

This film has a pretty boring cat-and-mouse game within its story. This is the main part of the film but isn’t done very well. Cuoco’s character is trying to hide her true nature from her husband while the news and other people are closing in on them. Their secret is not easy to keep with all the various outlets trying to find and identify them from an incident that happened at the hotel while they were there.

Cuoco had started making a career out of these types of fish-out-of-water characters. Her role in The Flight Attendant is a little similar to this one and other roles she’s played are of a ditzy blond getting in over her head. They aren’t a far cry from her role in The Big Bang Theory as Penny though. She’s found a niche as these women who seem to be a bit dim-witted but are smarter than she lets on. 

David Oyelowo has also found a niche as a leading man in films and television shows like Laemen: Bass Reeves. He burst on the scene as Martin Luther Jr. and has been doing solid work ever since. Sometimes as a director. This role seems a bit beneath him though playing second fiddle to Cuoco. He usually leads films not playing goofy awkward husbands that have no clue what’s going on. He deserves better than this type of role to me.

Role Play takes popular themes we’ve seen before of mixed identification and keeping secrets from a significant other and uses them in a bad way. This movie isn’t that funny and the action sequences are rather bland. The main duo of Cuoco and Oyelowo don’t make a good team, they don’t have good chemistry and they’re not that interesting either. The director and writer wanted to reinvent this type of story but did it blandly. If you want to see films similar to this just watch True Lies and Mr. and Mrs. Smith instead.

2 stars

Dan Skip Allen