The Brothers Grimsby - Buff and Buffoon

Sacha Baron Cohen is back with yet another dim-witted character creation, which he seems to write and perform so well. After the huge success of the 2006 movie Borat, and the less successful films, Bruno and The Dictator, Cohen now stars in The Brothers Grimsby as a football (soccer) hooligan from the North of England who is trying to find his brother.

Cohen plays Nobby, while Mark Strong plays his brother, Sebastian. When Sebastian is adopted from an orphanage, the two brothers are parted. Now all grown up, Nobby tracks Sebastian down, only to find they both took wildly different paths in life. The U.S. trailer for The Brothers Grimsby has just dropped online.

Nobby is a proud Northerner, father to eleven children and more focused on drinking, watching football and impregnating his girlfriend (Rebel Wilson) than climbing any career ladder. Meanwhile Sebastian is one of the world's most deadly assassins, working as an MI6 agent. When Nobby tracks his brother down, he unwittingly puts Sebastian in danger, and the two end up on the run.

In addition to Cohen and Strong, The Brothers Grimsby has a strong supporting cast, including the aforementioned Rebel Wilson (Pitch Perfect), Isla Fisher, Penelope Cruz, Annabelle Wallis, Ian McShane, and Gabourey Sidibe. The movie is written by Cohen with Phil Johnston (Wreck-It-Ralph) and Peter Baynham (Borat, Bruno). Louis Leterrier (The Transporter, Now You See Me) directs.

If you've loved Cohen's previous work then you might well love this too, and that's great. It could also be that the action scenes lift this film sufficiently to make it passable, and that's great too – but based on this trailer, it looks like The Brothers Grimsby really might be grim after all.