Film / Spy

Cooper. Susan Cooper.

Spy is a 2015 comedy film written and directed by Paul Feig. It stars Melissa McCarthy, Jude Law, Allison Janney, Morena Baccarin, Peter Serafinowicz, Rose Byrne, Jason Statham, Nargis Fakhri, and Björn Gustafsson.

Susan Cooper (played by McCarthy) graduated at the top of her CIA cohort 10 years ago, but is now relegated to a desk job, serving as the Mission Control for field agent Bradley Fine (played by Law) while secretly pining for him.

When Bradley is murdered while investigating a nuke that arms dealer Rayna Boyanov (played by Byrne) is selling, and other CIA operatives' identities are exposed, Susan decides to step into the field to stop the nuke sale and avenge Bradley. Along the way, she is supported by her best friend Nancy (Miranda Hart), whilst former operative Rick Ford (played by Statham) takes things into his own hands instead.

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Spy provides examples of:

• 10-Minute Retirement: Ford quits the CIA when Susan is given clearance to go on the field. Elaine's reaction implies he's done this several times for other perceived slights.
• Abusive Parents: Hearing Susan's brief description of her mother heavily implies that she was emotionally abusive to her daughter.
• The Ace: Karen Walker; Susan and Nancy point out that to go along with her perfect looks and wealth, she's also been on more successful missions than Fine. And when they scoff that she's so full of herself, she wouldn't even know who they are, Karen comes up and addresses them by name.
• Acrofatic: Susan can pull some moves in a fight that would make Black Widow proud.
• Action Girl: Susan proves that she's this with the attitude to match.
• Action Survivor: Downplayed to a degree, but the more pathetic agents (Ford, Nancy, and Aldo) managed to survive throughout the movie.
• Adam Westing: Jason Statham as CIA agent Rick Ford, a parody of his usual Action Genre Hero Guy roles. Ford recounts surviving fatal injuries (which Susan lampshades as medically impossible) and having all his loved ones killed in front of him on various missions. But his guts don't mean competence.
  Susan: I can see your gun sticking out of your back pocket, unless you're so extreme you have a second dick growing out of your hip.
• Amazon Chaser:
  • See Fine's reaction when Susan kicks the shit out of De Luca's men all by herself. Relevant considering he spent most of the movie being completely oblivious of her crush on him:
    Fine: Holy. Shit.
  • Aldo also counts considering he spends most of the movie trying to get into Susan's pants.
    Aldo: One day, Lady Superspy Susan Cooper: I will fuck you.
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: During one of Jason Statham's Badass Boasts, he lists things he's done that no one thought possible including "walk through fire, waterski blindfolded, take up piano at a late age."
• Artistic License – Gun Safety: Strangely averted with Susan Cooper who shows proper trigger discipline throughout the film. Played straight in the opening when Fine accidentally kills his target by sneezing while keeping his finger on the trigger.
• Bad Boss: Rayna is a horrible boss and treats her henchmen as entirely disposable. She's also incapable of learning their names or telling them apart. Deconstructed, as mistreating her henchmen costs her their loyalty (at one point, three of them end up at odds because they're all trying to sell her out), and even when it doesn't, killing so many of them for failing means that by the third act, all she has for back-up is Susan (an undercover CIA agent), Nancy (an undercover CIA analyst who isn't exactly confidence-inspiring as a bodyguard), and Fine (another undercover CIA agent).
• Badass Boast: Parodied with Rick Ford, who makes one boast after another about his badass past to the point of absurdity. Susan eventually gets so sick of it that she starts mocking Ford on how ridiculous it all sounds.
  Ford: I once used defibrillators on myself. I've pulled shards of glass out of my fucking eye. I've jumped from a high-rise building using only a raincoat as a parachute and broke both legs upon landing, and I still had to pretend I was in a fucking Cirque de Soleil show! I've swallowed enough microchips and shit them back out again to make a computer. This [left] arm has been ripped off completely, and reattached with this [right] fucking arm.
  Susan: I don't know that that's possible. I mean, medically.
  Ford: During the threat of an assassination attempt, I appeared, convincingly, in front of Congress as Barack Obama.
  Susan: In blackface? That's not appropriate.
  Ford: I watched the couple that raised me explode in a van. I watched the woman I love get tossed from a plane and hit by another plan in mid-air. I drove a car off a freeway, on top of a train, while I was on fire. Not the car, I was on fire.
  Susan: Jesus, you're intense.
• Badass Bookworm:
  • Susan is one of the top CIA analysts. She is also a capable driver and an excellent shot, and can take on trained bodyguards with ease.
  • Nancy is another analyst who saved Susan from De Luca by shooting a rifle at him.
• The Baroness: Rayna is very much the sexpot version. Susan being who she is, this doesn't impress her much.
• Becoming the Mask: Aldo/Albert... possibly.
  Albert: [in Italian accent] How do you like my English accent? I learnt it from the Downton Abbey! [in English accent] Just kidding! [in Italian accent] Or am I?
• Beware the Nice Ones: Susan is typically sweet and mild-mannered, but hurt the people she loves and you're in for a world of pain. Bradley is surprised by her twice, first when she unleashes her foul mouth to Rayna and then when she single-handedly defeats all of DeLuca's henchmen.
• Big Bad: Rayna is presented as this, having exposed the identities of CIA operatives, killed Bradley and trying to sell the nuke. A Chechen terrorist is also hinted at as a Greater-Scope Villain interested in the nuke. However, the true Big Bad is revealed to be De Luca, who intends to steal the nuke for himself and sell it at a higher price.
• Big Bad Wannabe: What Rayna actually is. Her Bad Boss tendencies mean that she's killed off any competent underlings on top of being utterly inept as a villain. She only stays alive because Susan Took a Level in Badass and kept saving her until she could find the nuke she planning to sell.
• Big Damn Heroes:
  • Aldo, Nancy and 50 Cent riding to the rescue in 50 Cent's helicopter.
  • Rick Ford bursts into the showdown between the CIA agents, Rayna, and De Luca — and then immediately proceeds to subvert the trope by getting his clothes caught on the door and tripping.
• Bigger Is Better in Bed: Ford is implied to be this when a random woman in the CIA basement mentions that his penis is bigger than the mook's in his dick pics and Ford informs Cooper that she liked having sex with him the night before during The Stinger when she starts yelling in horror and surprise upon finding out that she slept with him.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Played with, but ultimately averted, with Bradley Fine. It's implied that Fine intentionally convinced Susan to become his Mission Control support instead of a fellow agent because he didn't want her to potentially show him up. Despite this, after the reveal, he's actually not dismissive of Susan's feats like Ford is and did legitimately value Susan as his support. He also saves her life multiple times during the mission, even at the risk of blowing his cover. Ultimately, due to Fine's limited screen time, he's open to a lot of Alternate Character Interpretation. See also Nice Guy and Jerk with a Heart of Gold below.
• Black Comedy Rape: Aldo (Peter Serafinowicz), a supporting agent, often "unintentionally" gropes Susan.
  Susan: Did you send me the wrong agent?
  Nancy: Aldo? He's the best! *looks at his profile* Oh, no, oh, he has had some complaints against him...
• Blatant Lies: Many of Ford's accomplishments are downright suspect, and Susan herself points out some of them are outright impossible.
• Bloodier and Gorier: For the Bond-esque films, this is on the brutal end, showing things such as knives stabbing through hands, and a throat getting dissolved by a corrosive-spiked drink.
• Bond One-Liner: Fine of course drops these on missions, much to Susan's delight.
• Bond Villain Stupidity: Played with and eventually played straight; when Rayna has captured Susan, she suggests killing Susan right away, but pulls a Fake Kill Scare and dismisses her as Not Worth Killing. When Rayna leaves for the deal, Susan and Aldo are left behind, secured only with ropes and two guards who are watching for external intruders.
• Boom, Headshot!: A sniper, later revealed to be Fine, puts a bullet in Karen Walker's head just before she can kill Susan.
• Brick Joke: Rick Ford claims that he is going to Italy after the events of the film. During the credits, several of Susan's missions are shown, and one of them involves saving Rick Ford from the Italian Mafia.
• Butt-Monkey:
  • Susan is yelled at and insulted by her boss Elaine (Allison Janney) and is at the bottom rung of the office food chain with Nancy.
  • Anton (Björn Gustafsson), Rayna's supposed head of security. In the limited amount of screen time he has, Susan throws her cellphone at his face, forcibly takes his jacket, insults him to the point of tears, then he gets shot unceremoniously and is never mentioned again.
• The Cameo: 50 Cent appears as himself at a Budapest nightclub. Nancy attacks him to cause a distraction, and he later loans his helicopter to the CIA during the final fight. Verka Serduchka also makes an appearance earlier.
• Casanova Wannabe: Aldo is constantly hitting on Susan.
• Character Catchphrase: Bradley's "Who's the Fine-st of them all?" in the field.
• Chekhov's Gag: Susan's cupcake necklace, given to her by Fine. She releases the toggle lock when De Luca grabs it, making him fall from the helicopter.
• Chekhov's Gun: The movie keeps the viewers on edge by playing with the venerable Bond film trope of having all of the gadgets presented to the superspy during their briefing be useful at some point during the mission. While the poisoned-dart firing rape whistle and the nightvision scope wristwatch end up serving their intended use, Susan is not able to reach the poison neutralizing fake-laxative pills in time for them to be useful and only ever uses the chloroform soaked fake-hemorrhoid wipes to bludgeon a goon with the package. The last gadget given to her, a can of fake-antifungal spray that can neutralize security devices is never even pulled out at all, as Susan simply never finds herself in a situation necessitating its use.
• Chekhov's Gunman:
  • Bradley Fine, who was presumed dead from the beginning, turns out to be alive and well.
  • 50 Cent lends Nancy his helicopter in the climax since he's now scared of her.
• The Chessmaster:
  • De Luca. He wasn't really going to sell the nuke to Dudaev, and isn't loyal to Rayna. He has another buyer willing to pay more, so he takes the payment and kills Dudaev.
  • Bradley Fine. After killing Rayna's father, he gets into Rayna's good graces and fakes his own death in a long term gambit to find the nukes. He manages to do this while also helping out Susan without blowing his cover.
• Chivalrous Pervert: Aldo might be gropey and obsessed with Susan's ass and tits, but on the other hand he genuinely praises her for her performance on the field and is constantly complimenting her.
• *Click* Hello: Rayna to Fine when he sneaks into her house. It's later revealed, though, that they planned this together.
• Cloudcuckoolander: It's not entirely clear just how much Rick Ford is deliberately exaggerating and how much he's delusional, but he does in all earnestness believe that the CIA has a Face/Off machine even after being told it doesn't exist. He carries around a Louis Vuitton backpack for no discernible reason, and his last plan involves taking a speedboat down to various Mediterranean countries without realizing until moments later that the boat he's taking is in a landlocked lake.
• Cluster F-Bomb: All over the place, from many characters, but Ford takes the cake.
• The Comically Serious: Elaine in particular, but Nancy herself has shades of this.
• Confronting Your Imposter: Invoked. When Rayna bumps into Susan and Nancy, the latter says she's Susan Cooper, because Susan is operating under the alias Amber Valentine. Susan handwaves it by saying the latter is nervous.
• Crazy Cat Lady: Susan's 2nd secret identity of "Penny Morgan", a single woman from Iowa so fond of cats that she even wears a T-shirt printed with a tacky cat image. However, she soon ditches this image in her 'Penny' identity to infiltrate the Casino di Roma.
• Creative Closing Credits: Future missions and gadgets.
• Creator Cameo: Director/writer/producer Paul Feig shows up as a drunk man walking into a wall as Susan goes to her Paris hotel room.
• Credits Gag: Mitch Silpa is credited as "C̶o̶l̶i̶n̶Frederick!" Also, when the definition of "redacted" shows up, the nearby credits get blacked out.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Susan wipes out De Luca's henchmen by herself with a combination of gunfire and martial arts.
• Daddy's Little Villain: Rayna inherits her father's crime syndicate, and his ruthlessness too, at least where her own mooks are involved. Pity that experience isn't inheritable, as it's soon clear that she's in deep over her head—if it weren't for CIA intervention on multiple occasions, she'd have been killed.
• Dark Action Girl: De Luca's associate Lia (Nargis Fakhri) and Karen.
• Deconstructive Parody: Of the rough brawny agent type generally played by Jason Statham and fittingly deconstructed by Jason Statham. The film goes out of its way to show that Rick Ford, despite his blustering and declamations that Susan is going to fuck everything up, is NOT a good agent. His boisterousness makes him easy to spot out in a crowd (he gets made TWICE in the film alone) and his lone wolf act leaves him vulnerable to attack. He's only really good in a fight, if he doesn't take himself out by getting caught on a door first.
• Decon-Recon Switch: The film first acts a deconstruction of James Bond films and the idea of a fully capable secret agent. We see from the outset that the primary reason why Bond-like agents are one man armies is because they have hardworking desk agents who not only monitor their every action, scope the surrounding areas for Mooks, and tell the agent when to duck mid-fight, they also can call for a freaking drone strike to help an agent get out of a sticky situation. This is reconstructed later in the film when Susan goes out into the field and we learn that she always had the chops to be a top agent, getting the top marks at the academy and literally decimating the field test. Fine knew this and persuaded her to be his assistant rather than a field agent so she wouldn't be the best spy in the game, leaving room for himself to take that title. However, this ultimately works out for Susan; her 10 years as an analyst has provided her with the tech skills and knowledge of targets to make her a one man "two-man team," combining brains and brawn, and thus making her a Bond-level super spy.
• Designated Girl Fight: Susan only has one main fight with a female mook throughout the movie, while others are her taking on guys. The trope is even inverted, as this is her most brutal and dangerous fight.
• The Determinator: Susan is only tasked with a track-and-report, but each time she is able to get valuable intel, it makes her more confident she can do more than simply surveillance and bravely pushes onward.
• Disney Villain Death: De Luca suffers this when Susan loosens the toggle on her necklace as he's holding onto it.
• Double Agent: Elaine suspects this when the identities of the CIA's top operatives are leaked. Karen turns out to be responsible, and Bradley is presented as this too, though it is quickly subverted.
• Double Reverse Quadruple Agent:
  • Bradley appears to side with Rayna when Susan is captured, but later reveals that he is still working in the CIA's interests, having secretly saved Susan by killing Karen. Susan later pretends to defect from the CIA to save Bradley as well.
  • Karen also qualifies since she initially betrays the CIA to Rayna, then later tries to kill Rayna under De Luca's orders.
• Drives Like Crazy: Aldo even drives down stairs to get Susan to her hotel, in a scene vaguely resembling The Bourne Identity.
• Drugs Causing Slow-Motion: Everything becomes slow-motion when Susan is drugged by Rayna.
• Dude Magnet: By the end of the movie, three guys are after Susan Cooper: Aldo, Bradley Fine, and even Rick Ford.
• Enhance Button: Nancy does this to a screengrab of a paper with a phone number on it.
• Extreme Doormat: Susan. Fine gets her to run errands outside of work and fire his gardener for him (because he allegedly kept running over the sprinklers with the lawnmower).
  • She can't fire Fine's gardener Jaime after she sees a picture of his kids and he serenades her. She ends up mowing the lawn as Jaime watches, pleased.
  • Elaine deduces that Susan never became a field agent despite graduating first of her class at The Farm because Bradley Fine smooth talked her into applying for a desk job so she'd not overshadow him and that's something that happens to female agents all the time (making her sigh "Women..."). His surprise at later seeing how much ass Susan kicks might imply he genuinely didn't know how much better she'd be at field work.
• Fake Defector: Fine fakes his death because he can't get in deep enough if the CIA knows.
• Fake Ultimate Hero: Rick Ford. It becomes apparent over the course of the film that he's been exaggerating how much of a badass he is as his cover frequently gets blown and he ends up becoming The Load to Susan.
• Faking the Dead: Rayna shoots a fruit with Fine's contact lens-cam on it.
• Fancy Dinner: Susan has two. The first time, with Fine, the white lumps the waiter pours water on are towels, and she accidentally chews one. The next, with Rayna in Rome, similar ones are actually edible.
• Fangirl: Nancy is a big fan of 50 Cent. And of course, Susan to Fine.
• Flipping the Bird: Rayna forces her would-be assassin to take the poisoned drink himself, and his final act before dying is to flip her off.
• Flock of Wolves: Rayna's Bad Boss tendencies quickly reduces her security detail to consisting entirely of CIA moles. In her defense, she catches on to this and discards them in favor of an accomplice... who is also a CIA mole, with deeper cover.
• Flowery Insults:
  • A running gag in this series, and it's very, very creative.
  • Susan gets quite a lot of at Rayna's expense. It's pretty much the cornerstone of their relationship.
• Flynning: Played Straight and subverted in Susan's knife fight. When she first picks up the frying pan, she and the mook clang their weapons uselessly against each other at arms length (small weapons like knives and frying pans should never collide like that), but then she starts using the frying pan defensively like a makeshift shield.
• Forced to Watch: Rayna taunts Susan about having to watch Fine die on his body camera before shooting him. Thankfully for her, Fine was faking his death to get closer to Rayna.
• Foreshadowing:
  • The Action Prologue shows how Fine is dependent on Susan's intel and direction during mission. So when on his second mission he ignores her directions and takes out goons sneaking up on him from behind when he previously needed Susan's warning to do that, it clues the viewer in that this ambush is more than it seems and that Fine knows more than he's letting on.
  • The opening Bond-esque theme song "Who Can You Trust?", as the plot hinges on double agents inside the CIA.
• Friendly Enemy: Susan becomes this to Rayna despite all the insults they trade. As Rayna is led away, she and Susan trade a final round of insults before smiling at each other.
• Frying Pan of Doom: Susan uses several in her fight against Lia. Subverted in that Susan still has a hard time even with them.
• Girl Friday: Susan to Fine at the beginning of the movie, and has been in this role for about a decade. Once he dies (or so it appears), she instead becomes a field agent in her own right.
• Girly Run:
  • Rayna has one of these.
  • As does De Luca.
• Greater-Scope Villain: Solsa Dudaev, a Chechen terrorist to whom Rayna and De Luca want to sell the stolen nuke. Subverted when he finally appears; De Luca takes his payment for the nuke, then kills Dudaev on the spot, makes it clear that he has no respect for him (he compares giving Dudaev the nuke to "giving a Stradivarius to a hillbilly), and plans to sell the nuke to an unknown buyer (who does fit this trope) who can get it into New York.
• Hawaiian-Shirted Tourist:
  • Susan's CIA-given disguises as "Carol Jenkins" and "Penny Morgan" are caricatures of stereotypical and uncultured American tourists from the Midwest, complete with tacky dress sense. Susan herself is frustrated by these disguises, which she is still subject to at the movie's end.
  • Ironically, an actual American tourist interrupts Susan in Budapest to ask about a fried chicken chain.
• Hell Hotel: Susan's hotel in Paris, complete with dark interiors and strange noises such as sobbing women and maniacal laughter.
  Susan: Can this hotel get any more murder-y?
• Hidden Depths: Susan. Elaine is shocked to see the video of her combat training at The Farm showing her fighting brutally and efficiently.
  Elaine: So imagine my surprise when I pull up this footage from The Farm. [cue video of Susan laying waste to a target room and instructors trying to calm her down] I mean, what the fuck?! I almost put it up on YouTube!
• Hollywood Acid: When the man who spiked Rayna's drink is made to drink it, his throat flat-out dissolves. Susan faints.
• Humiliation Conga: The gadget rundown scene, in which Susan is given weapons and countermeasures disguised as hermorrhoid wipes, stool softeners, and a watch adorned with the cover art of Beaches. Rayna is highly amused when she sees the items.
• Hyper-Competent Sidekick: Susan turns out to be this for Fine all along, as she's more than capable of handling herself in the field.
• I Just Shot Marvin in the Face: In the opening scene, Fine accidentally shoots the terrorist he's interrogating in the head as a result of an ill-timed sneeze.
• Idiot Hero: Ford. He's supposed to be an expert CIA Field agent, but has nearly gotten himself killed because of utter incompetence.
• Impaled Palm: Susan stabs a knife clear through Lia's hand during their fight. Lia just pulls it right back out again and mockingly thanks her for the weapon.
• Improvised Weapon: Susan uses everything she can to fight off the Elite Mook in the kitchen, from frying pans to baguettes to lettuce.
• Irony: Ford regularly puts Susan down, calling her a secretary and unsuited for field work. However, given how often he messes up in the field himself as well as the fact that he manages to keep on the trail of the case despite being cut off from the CIA's information network, it seems that he'd work out excellently as a desk agent instead of on the field.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold:
  • Ford is a brash, abrasive guy that seems to just be constantly angry for no discernible reason and doesn't particularly care for Fine or Cooper, but he has no problem with wanting to avenge Fine's death and in his own way doesn't want to see Cooper come to any harm.
  • One interpretation of Fine's character. He's clearly pretty full of himself, takes advantage of Susan's doormat personality to get her to do menial tasks for him, gives her a pretty shitty thank-you present (in the form of an awful, cheap necklace), and may have (according to Elaine) persuaded Susan to become his desk partner to keep her from competing with him for the slot of top agent. However, he is never outright mean to Susan, makes it clear numerous times that he truly appreciates and values her assistance, and legitimately does care very much about her.
• Jerkass:
  • Rayna curses out pretty much everyone around her and treats others with thinly-veiled derision at best. The only person she shows even a semblance of respect to is Susan, and even that is only for brief moments before she's back to mockery and insults.
  • Pat, the CIA's gadget guy, refuses to make less embarrassing labels for Susan's gadgets because he just doesn't feel like it, and tells her to her face that he doesn't expect her to survive the mission.
• Job Title: A movie called "Spy", in which the main characters (the good guys, anyway) are all spies.
• Just Between You and Me: Practically every single villain, major and minor, in this movie enjoys small talk, whether it be gloating, revealing plans, or just chit chat in the case of Karen Walker, when they have their target dead-to-rights at gunpoint. The only one who gets away with it is Reyna, and only because the good guys need her alive so that they can find the nuclear device.
• Just Friends: Susan and Fine. The fancy restaurant scene is full of Bait-and-Switch romantic imagery, complete with lampshading and Suspiciously Specific Denial by Susan when Fine dashes her hopes.
• Laser-Guided Karma: Rayna killing her own men leaves her nobody competent enough or willing to look after her safety.
• Leave No Witnesses: Tihomir Boyanov after hiding the nuke. He had his henchmen "erase" the people who hid it. Then he "erased" the erasers. Fine then accidentally erases the eraser of the erasers, cutting off any lead the CIA had to finding the nuke.
• Lodged-Blade Recycling: Lia when fighting Susan.
• Lovable Sex Maniac: Aldo, who's constantly very forward and gropey with Susan, but genuinely admires and respects her skills.
• Male Frontal Nudity: A mook takes pictures of Susan while tailing her, but, when she gets his camera, it also contains his dick pics.
  Woman in CIA basement: Ford's is bigger.
• Manipulative Bastard: Bradley Fine. Susan says she decided to be desk-bound despite being top of her class because Fine convinced her they make a good team. Elaine tells Susan that Fine probably "sniped" her so she wouldn't compete with him for a field agent position.
• Meaningful Name: "Reyna" is a derivative of "Reina", which means "Queen" in Spanish, and Reyna certainly acts the part. Also, Agent "Fine", played by Jude Law is ridiculously attractive.
• Meet My Good Friends Lefty and Righty: At one point, Susan refers to her fists as Cagney & Lacey.
• Mock Cousteau: One of Susan's aliases in the Creative Closing Credits.
• The Mole: Karen Walker, which caused Fine to fake his death to stay on the mission, and also forces the CIA to send out non-field agents.
• Never Trust a Trailer: Some versions of the trailer and poster feature Rose Byrne, but it isn't obvious she plays Rayna, a villain.
• Nice Guy: Bradley Fine ultimately turns out to be this, though it's not obvious at the beginning. Though he definitely does have some manipulative traits and is certainly not perfect, the film does go out of its way to show that, while some of his actions come across as kind of dickish, he means well and genuinely cares about Susan. He goes out of his way to save her life and protect her on numerous occasions during the mission despite being deep undercover, seems quite touched when he finds out that she's been in love with him for a long time, and sincerely congratulates and praises her once she is promoted to field agent at the end. Ultimately, by the end of the movie, his more jerk-ish behavior comes across as simply being Innocently Insensitive.
• Nice Guys Finish Last: Gender-flipped. Susan starts the movie desperately in Love with Bradley Fine and being willing to do anything for him, but all that gets her is a crappy basement posting and a 10-year stint in the friendzone. Once she becomes more of an asshole, she gets better assignments and love interests.
• No Dead Body Poops: Averted once.
  Rayna: One of these dead fuckers shat his pants!
• No Romantic Resolution: Of course, Susan and Fine. He asks Susan if she meant what she said at the villa, and invites her to dinner, but she brushes it off in the same Just Friends way as before and says she'll be celebrating with Nancy.
• No Sense of Humor: Elaine claims to not have one when she gives Susan yet another humiliating cover ID.
• Not Even Bothering with the Accent: There's a brief mention of Ford becoming a naturalized citizen so Jason Statham can keep his British accent.
• No, You: Ford and Susan arguing over who's going to compromise the mission.
  Ford: You're going to ruin this fucking mission!
  Susan: No, you are going to ruin this mission!
  Ford: No. You are. *walks down the hallway out of sight*
  Susan: No, you are!
  * beat, then Ford's silhouette peeks around the corner)
  Ford: No. You. Times infinity.
• Oblivious to Love: Fine to Susan. Though the earlier scenes of the film suggests that Fine could be purposely manipulating Susan's feelings for him, the scene at De Luca's villa heavily implies otherwise. Susan says she's in love with Fine and he never knew at De Luca's villa, in front of Fine, to convince Rayna and De Luca she's not loyal to the CIA and only wants to keep him alive. Fine's Reaction Shot shows that he's surprised, but quite sincerely touched by this. That scene, plus his conversation with Susan after the nuke retrieval, particularly support the interpretation that he was not purposely taking advantage of her, but rather was truly unaware of her feelings all along.
• One-Woman Army: Susan obviously has become this by the end of the movie. Cemented by the credits, which briefly shows glimpses of field missions she undertakes in the future for the CIA. There's a lot.
• Paper-Thin Disguise: Ford infiltrates a dance club wearing glasses and a fake mustache.
  Susan: You look like a perverted bus driver!
• Porn Names: Nancy invokes the [Name of first pet] + [Name of first street you lived on] version and chooses Amber Valentine. Susan's would be Meatball Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard.
• Precision F-Strike: Not with the actual F-bomb, which is used liberally, but there is a Precision Country Matters Strike near the beginnng.
• Punny Name: Bradley Fine.
  Fine: Who's the Finest of them all?
• Reasonable Authority Figure: Elaine. Despite her droll putdowns of Susan in the beginning, she OK's Susan's plan to track Rayna and DeLuca undercover and allows her to stay in the field as she proves her worth.
• Rewatch Bonus: The scene where Susan is captured by Rayna and briefly believes Fine to be a double agent has quite a bit of subtext once you know that Fine is actually on Susan's side the whole time. Fine seems to be subtly checking that Susan's okay when she first regains consciousness, cracks an amused smirk when Susan calls Rayna a "slutty dolphin trainer", gives her a warning look when she states that he killed Rayna's father, and appears to be subtly panicking when it looks like Rayna's going to kill Susan.
• Rogue Agent:
  • Ford, offended that Elaine let Susan go after Rayna instead of him, goes rogue and sets off on the mission on his own.
  • Later, Susan goes off the grid to pursue Rayna, and poses as Rayna's secret bodyguard when her cover is almost blown, though she tells the CIA afterwards and they send her backup.
• Running Gag:
  • The extensive usage of Flowery Insults.
  • The CIA basement being overrun by vermin.
  • Nancy "panicking" anytime she has to think up something on the fly.
  • Susan's mousy, frumpy disguises.
  • Aldo's Lovable Sex Maniac attitude to Susan.
  • Ford's over the top stories of his past missions.
• Save the Villain: Susan ultimately has to save Rayna over and over because, if Rayna dies, the nuke will never be found and could potentially be picked up by somebody else. Susan in NOT pleased with this arrangement.
• Separated by a Common Language: Ford's pronunciation of the word twat to rhyme with "swot" may baffle some British viewers — in the UK it is more often than not pronounced to rhyme with "bat".
• Serial Escalation: The more Rick Ford recounts his various exploits, the more ridiculously impossible and over-the-top they seem.
• She Cleans Up Nicely: Susan after her makeover to enter the casino versus her frumpy "Penny Morgan" disguise. However, Rayna still mocks her dress at every turn.
• Shoe Phone: Susan's gadgets include haemorrhoid wipes (chloroform sheets), stool softener (poison antidote), anti-fungal spray (security system freeze spray/pepper spray), and a Beaches novelty watch (night vision scope).
• Shout-Out: Ford believes the CIA has a Face/Off machine, despite the agents who tricked him into believing this laughing at him across the table.
  • The movie features a Bond-esque opening sequence, as well as a standard Q scene played for laughs.
  • De Luca dies the same way as Hans Gruber, with the hero releasing an object from which the villain is dangling, and the camera doing a slow-mo shot of the subsequent fall.
  • Rayna makes it all the way to level 95 in Candy Crush.
  • The credits show one of Susan's future gadgets is Shark Repellant.
• Sir Not-Appearing-in-This-Trailer:
  • The presence of Morena Baccarin in the movie comes as a complete surprise since she isn't featured in any of the trailers or mentioned in the publicity. Her small screen time before being offed probably has something to do with it.
  • Peter Serafinowicz is arguably the male character with the most screen time after Jason Statham and yet he's not featured in any trailers.
• Sir Swears-a-Lot:
  • Susan in her "Amber Valentine" bodyguard persona.
  • Ford. Especially using synonyms or colloquialism for vagina.
    Elaine: Dial it way back with the T-word Ford.
    Ford: Grow up, "Twat" means something totally different in England.
    Matthew: Well here it means "Vagina".
    *about 1 minute later*
    Ford: You pair of fucking vaginas!
    Elaine: Seriously, you've got to cut that out!
• Slap-Slap-Kiss: Throughout the movie Ford and Susan do nothing but complain and insult each other, but by the end Ford compliments her and recognizes her as a competent spy after all and The Stinger even shows that they slept with each other! (although Susan didn't seem too happy about it... at least until the second stinger).
• Smug Snake:
  • For all of Rick Ford's bravado, he is often the butt of everyone's jokes and portrayed as generally incompetent on the field. He is easily stalked by De Luca's men, falls victim to a bag swap, is instantly recognised by Reyna, knocks himself out trying to stop De Luca, and slips while trying to climb onto the helicopter. It extends even to his own colleagues - his boss' reaction to him quitting in protest is "That hasn't happened before" and his colleagues trick him into believing the CIA has a hidden Face/Off machine.
  • Rayna is eventually shown to be this. Despite her haughty demeanor and ruthless attitude, she is mostly dependent on her henchmen to do her dirty work, and is outclassed skills-wise by Bradley and Susan. She even gets outplayed by De Luca, who almost kills her and hijacks the nuke for himself.
• Sneeze of Doom: Fine accidentally kills a man he's interrogating at gunpoint for information when an ill-timed sneeze makes the gun go off.
• Spy Catsuit: The top half of Rayna's dress during the climax clearly invokes this. Susan says it makes her look like a "slutty dolphin trainer".
• The Stinger: A Bedmate Reveal of Susan and Ford. As she screams in shock, he says she liked it the night before. A second stinger shows the two of them starting round two. "Don't do that thing with your thumb!"
• Strange Minds Think Alike: Hearing Nancy's idea of an undercover name ("Amber Valentine") makes both Susan and Rayna remark that it sounds like the name of a porn star.
• Stupid Evil: Rayna's villainy is ultimately shown to be a weakness. On top of her arrogance, she's killed off any men who might have been loyal to her, or capable of keeping her alive. She ends up needing her enemies to keep saving her as a result.
• Tampering with Food and Drink: Susan foils an assassination attempt on Rayna upon witnessing this being done to Rayna's drink.
• Tempting Fate: Tihomir Boyanov scoffs at Bradley Fine telling him he has 10 seconds to live, seeing as he's the only one who knows where the nuke is. Too bad he didn't count on the dusty room setting off Bradley's allergies...
• Thanks for the Mammary: Invoked when Aldo drives Susan to her hotel. Also when Ford tries to climb up the helicopter.
• There Is No Kill Like Overkill: Susan winds up destroying the mook who almost blows her cover by kicking him in the balls, stabbing him in the gut, breaking his foot, pushing him off a balcony, causing him to be impaled by rebar at the bottom, vomiting on the corpse once she sees what she's done, and then accidentally dropping his knife down below and sticks him. She finally faints.
• Throw-Away Guns:
  • In the Action Prologue, Bradley tosses his pistol away instead of realoading when he runs dry.
  • At the film's climax, Susan throws an empty pistol at a Mook when she runs out of ammo.
• Those Two Guys: Despite being the main character, Susan has this dynamic with Nancy.
• Tuxedo and Martini: Bradley somehow appears in all his missions wearing a full tuxedo outfit. He even has a martini in the restaurant scene.
• Unresolved Sexual Tension: There are hints of this between Ford and Susan, not least because they are always bickering with each other.
• Unusually Uninteresting Sight: When the CIA is overrun with rats, nobody seems to take any notice. At one point Nancy has one clambering across her laptop, and later sitting on her shoulder. Another co-worker has one perched on her chest, but doesn't care enough about it to bother looking away from her computer.
  "Hey guys, there's a rat on my tits."
• Upper-Class Twit: Rayna can't tell her servants apart, to the point where an assassin replaced one of them for eight months without her noticing or stopping calling him by the other guys' name. She can't slide a gun on the ground more than a few feet and constantly belittles Susan's clothes even when she's well dressed.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: Susan and Rayna seem to have the beginnings of a friendship of this nature by the end.
  Susan: (as Rayna is being escorted by police) Hey! (affectionately) Fuck you, too.
• Vomit Indiscretion Shot: Susan after she kills a man. He falls from a balcony and gets impaled on a steel beam, she throws up in slow motion on his corpse.
• Wrestler in All of Us: Susan pulls off both a German suplex and a hurricarana.
• You Have Failed Me: Rayna seems to make it a policy to execute her mook bodyguards who fail in their duties. This backfires, though: between her executions and enemy action, her entire security detail is at one point reduced to Susan and Nancy, both CIA agents—and Bradley Fine, who is himself undercover CIA.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: The Boyanovs to their mooks. So regularly, it seems, that Rayna can't remember their names, and they have no loyalty.
• You Remind Me of X: Rayna says Susan-as-Penny reminds her of both her mother and a sad Bulgarian clown.

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