We live in crazy times and one of the best things that can offer an alternative of the unbearable reality for at least an hour and a half is a crazy comedy. If that’s what you’re looking for, ‘The Brothers Grimsby‘ (2016) might be just the stuff you need. The film director is the Frenchman Louis Leterrier, who directed several action films, and the lead actor is Sacha Baron Cohen. This combination is for some movie lovers a meeting of two of the best possible cinematic worlds, and ‘The Brothers Grimsby‘ is likely not to disappoint as an action comedy. Those who dislike Sacha Baron Cohen‘s cheeky, physical and sometimes physiological humor probably already know to avoid his films.
The story takes place on three continents: Africa, South America and Great Britain. These are the three continents on which the matches of the twothousandandsixteen (written as 200016 on a chest tattoo) football World Cup take place. The owner of the tattoo is Nobby, the hero of the film played by Sacha Baron Cohen, a hooligan supporter of the England national team from Grimsby (a real city in the north of England, twinned with Chernobyl, the filming did not take place there). He has nine children and a wife … you better see her with your own eyes. An orphan, as a child he was separated from his brother Sebastian – MI6 agent, killer of bad guys and protector of the good guys – whom he finds at the exact moment he is carrying out a mission to prevent the assassination of the head of the World Health Organization. As a result of the physical collision of the two reunited brothers, the mission fails and Sebastian is suspected as a traitor. The good guys and the bad guys, MI6 and the terrorists, they all want to kill him. The only ones who help him are an operator from the MI6 headquarters and brother Nobby, who may seem like a perfect idiot but has as allies the whole tribune of hooligans who support England in football.
That’s pretty much the premise of the story, but you already know that in Sacha Baron Cohen‘s films (he also co-wrote the script) the story is just a pretext for a continuous string of gags of all kinds, from the physically comic to the character ones, from impossible stunts to shameless language. You can rely on humor to be as politically incorrect as possible. This is what happens all the time in ‘The Brothers Grimsby‘. Anyone and anything can be the subject of jokes: spies and spy movies, football and its supporters, obesity, families with many children, welfare, terrorists and counter-terrorists, the World Health Organization, philanthropists, Daniel Radcliffe and Donald Trump. Sacha Baron Cohen as the hooligan brother is outrageous as always, while Mark Strong as the spy brother tries to be funny by dullness. The action scenes are very well done, you can see that the director is an expert in this field. The humor has extreme moments and those who do not taste political incorrectness are warned. I liked the movie, it achieved its goal of entertaining me for its duration. Before I forget – Penélope Cruz is also in the cast.