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Spy Who Dumped Me, The

5/10

Stars: Mila Kunis, Kate McKinnon, Justin Theroux, Sam Heughan, Gillian Anderson, Ivanna Saknno, Paul Reiser, Jane Curtin, Tom Stourton, James Fleet, Carolyn Pickles, Lolly Adefope

Director: Susanna Fogel

If you fancy a film with lots of mindless action, car chases and gun battles, on a big budget, then (well, no, actually you should see Mission Impossible: Fallout). But, in the meantime, here's its poor (if expensive-looking) relation, a comedy-thriller that does have sex jokes (a few), swearing (lots of this for no good reason) and two heroines for the price of one hero.

And it does have its moments, although director Fogel lets it go on way too long.

We open on a great action sequence in 'Lithuania', where super-agent Drew (Theroux) fights for his life against assorted heavies. Cut to his ex, Audrey (Kunis), who is 'tired of being average' and has just been dumped by Drew, who she does not know is an agent.

But, before she and super-hyper best friend Morgan (McKinnon) know it, her apartment is being riddled with bullets, and they are on the run, carrying a statuette Drew has begged Audrey not to destroy. It contains a hard drive that alleged MI5 man Sebastian (Heughan, the hero of TV's Outlander) orders them to hand over - just before the Viennese restaurant where the girls are meant to be meeting a contact is destroyed by a multitude of cross-firing gunmen.

Who can they trust? Certainly not a deadly East European girl assassin and former gymnast (Sakhno), whom McKinnon (doing at least some of her own stuntwork) takes on in a trapeze battle at the end of the film.

Director Fogel often doesn't seem to know which chain to pull, what with goofiness, bawdiness, sight gags, torture porn, violent deaths and severed limbs. Achieving a consistent tone with that mixture is well nigh impossible.

But there's a couple of nice dialogue exchanges amid the expected vulgarity - 'We'll pose as the Canadian ambasssador and his wife'. 'Won't they know them?' 'No one recognises Canadians' - and the worst Cockney accent (step forward Ms McKinnon) since Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins.

The leads go at it full tilt and, if you want to hear These Boots Are Made for Walkin' vigorously sung in Czech, well, this is your moment.

David Quinlan

USA 2018. UK Distributor: LionsGate. Colour by FotoKem/Technicolor.
118 minutes. Widescreen. UK certificate: 15.

Guidance ratings (out of 3): Sex/nudity 1, Violence/Horror 2, Drugs 0, Swearing 3.

Review date: 18 Aug 2018