PremiumRole Play review - Kaley Cuoco-starrer falls prey to its own unachievable ambition
While Role Play on the face of it is a comedy assassin drama, the movie soon tries to be more than it can process in the run time.
Last Updated: 12.54 PM, Jan 13, 2024
A woman, Emma Brackett (Kaley Cuoco), lives the life of an undercover assassin. Far away from the world of killers, she has made a life as a commoner with her husband, Dave Brackett (David Oyelowo). When it is revealed to Dave that she is actually an assassin, he decides to go after his wife, and the mess is created.
Role Play Review:
The assassin drama genre now has more takers than ever. The John Wick franchise added an entirely fresh batch of fans last year, and many dramas in the same genre have been released around the same time. Continental, a series spin-off of the same material, is on the same platform as Role Play. So, when a movie with a perfectly catchy title and a very interesting cast, drops on a massive platform, people expect it to be on par with the studio's previous successes. While Role Play on the face of it is a comedy assassin drama, it soon tries to be more than it can process in the run time.
Written by Seth W Owen, Role Play begins like a family drama, that soon transcends into a hide-and-seek game. A woman is living two lives, both completely distinctive. While she is an assassin who can kill the strongest of them all, she is also a wife and a mother devoted to building a family life. However, at the heart of it, Role Play is about a woman craving normalcy but also returning to her dark past periodically just to keep it at bay and not let her loved world get affected by the same.
The premise is interesting until this point, and the big reveal for the husband is a very strong build-up. There is so much that is now going to unfold, and the shock value for Dave is much bigger than anyone else in the frame and for the audience too. One expects that the crescendo will now only rise higher, and the wilderness of this world will only take us by a more shocking surprise at every turn. But what the movie does instead is fall into its own trap and end up becoming nothing from the aforementioned things. It rather chooses to only add conflicts to the plate with no conviction to give time and solve the problems it has introduced.
We forever want the focus to be on the woman who is now fighting the dark world with her biggest vulnerability by her side. It is about a woman fighting the world to save a man and get back to a life she has always craved and created for herself. But director Thomas Vincent doesn’t give this trajectory the attention it deserves and rather chooses to focus on everything but this storyline. Role Play could have been a completely different movie if it chose the right spot and didn’t add things to just have a massive platter that it doesn’t have the appetite to swallow.
Role Play survives a bit more because of the performances. Kaley Cuoco, as a woman living two lives, is natural. It is tough to convince the audience of a trajectory like this, and the actor does it very well. David Oyelowo as a man who is busy figuring out everything like the audience is a very entertaining performance. Bill Nighy and Connie Nielsen both get half-baked parts to play and leave no mark. Maybe developing their arcs could have added more to the film than the other inconsequential subplots.
The technical department delivers what is expected and doesn’t go beyond. However, the action is quite good, and Cuoco is also serving some very interesting punches and gunshots.
Role Play Verdict:
Role Play, as a story on paper, seems interesting. It is the part beyond the build-up that needs more nuances, a personal story, and a detailed execution.