It's been a while since Sacha Baron Cohen dropped off the map completely, and I don't think that was an accident.
Cohen is incredibly savvy, and if there's anything that can kill a comic's career, it is over-exposure, and Cohen really hit a wall with “The Dictator,” at lease commercially speaking. I think it would be foolish to count someone as smart and funny as Cohen out, though, and early word on his new movie is terrific. Now there's a red-banded trailer for the film, and it got its restricted rating for some serious “O” face.
What's interesting is how much of the trailer is focused on Mark Strong, who plays a super-spy named Sebastien Graves. The trailer made me think of “Hardcore,” the movie that I saw at this year's Toronto Film Festival's Midnight Madness section. That's an action movie shot entirely POV, with the cameramen/stuntmen shooting crazy footage with GoPros strapped to themselves, and that whole Mark Strong sequence feels like it. It's weird seeing Strong here after watching “Kingsman” several times this year. That feels like the exact right fit, a great use of him, and I'm hoping Merlin will be back in a major way in the sequel that they're writing right now.
But this trailer is intentionally deceptive. The film is focused on Cohen's character, Nobby, who is Sebastien's generally useless brother. Nobby's a soccer hooligan with 11 kids who lives in a small town called Grimsby, where he suddenly finds himself a key part of a terrorist plot that brings Sebastien to Grimbsy and back into Nobby's life. It's an action comedy directed by Louis Leterrier, and the film features Isla Fisher, Rebel Wilson, Gabourey Didibe, and Penelope Cruz. It's a genuine action-comedy, and Leterrier's a graduate of the Luc Besson Europa action factory. It's been shuffled around the release schedule a bit, but that's been mainly to keep it away from “Kingsman,” “Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation,” and “SPECTRE.”
I'm curious to see how Cohen approaches this character, and I want to see if audiences are ready to take another deep dive into a crazy Cohen character when “The Brothers Grimsby” (or just “Grimsby” in the UK) arrives in theaters on March 4, 2016.