IN Paul Feig’s film, Melissa McCarthy plays CIA backroom communicator Susan who has passed the tests to be a field agent but seems destined to spend her career in front of a computer monitor.

In an interview, Feig wondered: ”If I was recruited as a spy and sent on a mission, how might I react?”.

The result is a take off of every secret intelligence operative ever put on the screen since that day in 1962 when Ursula Andress walked out of the surf to join Sean Connery in dealing with the villainous Dr No.

Feig has tried to make a difference by writing male field agents as bumbling twits and making all the film’s power characters women. As well as McCarthy, who fills the film with knockabout comedy uncomplicated by subtlety (doing the film’s overall impact only scant disparagement), Feig has cast two of my favouritest women in significant roles that men might have played in other examples of the genre.

Allison Janney plays the CIA chief and Miranda Hart is Susan’s handler when Susan gets sent into the field to observe and report on a plot involving the old chestnut about a nuke in the hands of some really bad guys.

More correctly, a really bad doll, played by Rose Byrne with ferocious fire and the most aggressive potty mouth in a film where that attribute gets a lot of air time.

The guys are played by Jude Law and Jason Statham. The film travels around eastern Europe and the Mediterranean before grinding to a halt. There may well be a sequel, given McCarthy’s hard-earned influence in Hollywood.

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