My Review of "Role Play"

Role Play has recently been dropped on Prime in January of 2024. I saw the trailer to this movie and I thought it would be really fun. It had a Mr. and Mrs. Smith vibe to it but this movie couldn't be further from that. The trailer made it come off like it was going to be some comedy and it didn't really have that light hearted vibe to it.

It all starts out with our hero Emma. She's off in some foreign country and basically she's out on an assassination job. She kills her target and heads home. When she gets home she is greeted with her loving husband and two kids. They're all totally in the dark as to who she really is.

Unfortunately for Emma, it turns out that she forgot her anniversary. Her husband Dave set everything up for them and she feels really bad that she forgot. To make up for the big mistake she tells Dave that she's going to set up a date at a fancy hotel for the two of them. They're going to go in role playing as if it's the first time they met. This may spruce up their relationship and keep the fire going.

They end meeting at the hotel's fancy hotel bar but there's another man there that recognizes Emma. He's out for her head as there's a big reward for her capture. Emma has to neutralize this guy while keeping it quiet from Dave. This doesn't go according to her plan as she accidentally kills the assassin in the worse way possible.

Now she has to go clean up the mess. So she goes off to Germany to fix things while Dave starts hearing about the murder at the hotel that they were in. More and more information comes to Dave to conclude that Emma isn't who he thinks she is.

That's basically the premise of the movie but they cut out a lot of details. I thought this would have been better as a TV show than a movie because there's so much that they could have packed into this movie. There are a lot of weird unanswered questions and stuff just conveniently happen to get them out of sticky situations.

There is a ton of potential for this movie to add in a whole bunch of comedy but they failed to do that. Sure there are a few comedic moments but they seem very dry and infrequent. Their main focus is on making Emma look like a badass than focus on the abundant amount of relationships they never really explore. I think if they focused on these relationship pieces we would have more vested interest in certain individuals dying or not.

In a lot of ways this movie feels like it was written as if they just reversed the male and female roles of a regular espionage movie. In some ways I think it works better with a female protagonist. Though they didn't make Dave whine and scream during the killing sequences. I guess that would have been a little funny. Emma also looks like she's got more empathy for her husband and kids than the usual male protagonist in the same situation.

Overall, I thought this was an adequate movie with some entertainment value. It's just too bad they didn't build the characters up a little more and add a lot more comedy aspects to it. I guess I may have wanted more comedy because it felt like it was going to be like that with the trailers. Maybe I just felt misled and that's why I'm a little bitter about it. As a movie it's okay. I would have to give this movie a 6 out of 10. It's enough fun if you're bored and looking for something to watch.