Popular director Paul Feig (Bridesmaids, The Heat) tackles the spy genre with the aptly titled Spy, which sees Susan Cooper (Melissa McCarthy) as a desk-jockey for the CIA, working as a liaison for one of the agency’s super-spies Bradley Fine (Jude Law). Cooper is a terrific analyst, but an underachiever and a joke to her fellow operatives, but when Fine is apparently killed in action by mob queen Rayna Boyanov (Rose Byrne), and the identities of many top CIA agents are compromised, Cooper must leave the safety of her desk and go undercover to expose the plot of Rayna and her arms dealer associate (Bobby Cannavale) before it’s too late.

Both serious and in comedy, the spy genre is already loaded — the freaking sequel to Cars was a spy movie! — and 2015 alone will see the release of new instalments of James Bond and Mission: Impossible films, amongst others. The question is whether Spy contains anything to make it stand out from an already crowded sub-genre. The answer is yes, Spy does hold it’s own in many ways, but it may not be what you were expecting.

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