Amazon Prime’s action-comedy Deep Cover is a decent original film, which is a pretty big thing to say in our era of never-ending streaming slop. Perhaps the main reason why it’s so watchable is surprisingly Orlando Bloom. He’s deeply funny and delightfully self-aware in the film.

Bloom plays Marlon Swift, a failed actor and improv student working odd gigs in London. He finally gets his chance to shine (in a sense) when he’s recruited by the police to go undercover in a criminal gang alongside fellow thespians Kat (Bryce Dallas Howard) and Hugh (Nick Mohammed). Both Howard and Mohammed are fine in their respective roles, but Bloom is the standout.

This is partially a writing issue. Marlon is the most colorful character in the film by far. He has an absurdly serious, grandiose view of acting, where every gig, even inappropriate ones like “boner pill” commercials, are an opportunity for backstories, improvisations and other method acting shenanigans. But Bloom’s performance is no less integral. The actor displays formidable comedic timing that I didn’t know he had. Bloom also plays everything with complete conviction. His Swift is never trying to be funny; despite all the ridiculous things he’s saying or doing. This lets Bloom hit that sweet spot between silliness and sincerity where many if not most great comedic performances are born.

I am also almost always charmed when an actor sort of riffs on their biography or past career roles too, which is what Bloom does here. Many see great acting as being exclusively about losing/removing yourself in/from a role. But I’d argue the opposite can also be true. Sometimes performances that hold a mirror up to their actors or wink at their previous roles can be wonderful in their own right.

Movies like The Wrestler and JCVD, for example, are an example of the former. Those movies centered on characters played by Mickey Rourke and Jean Claude Van Damme. In each case, their performances reflected aspects of their real lives, which deepened their emotional impact as a result. Then there is Hugh Grant in Paddington 2, which is a good instance of the latter. Grant’s performance is excellent for a lot of reasons. One of them is that it builds off our long-time association with him as the charming albeit befuddled romantic lead. Grant was able to play up and lampoon his “Hugh Grant-ness” as Phoenix Buchanan – such as his posh, smooth cadence – while simultaneously undercutting it with a bottomless narcissism. Collectively, this created a performance that was both wildly entertaining and surprising.

Bloom in Deep Cover falls firmly into the first camp. Although Bloom’s life and career doesn’t map onto Swift’s in nearly as comprehensive a way as Rourke’s did onto Randy “The Ram” Robinson’s, it does echo certain aspects. We learn early on in Deep Cover, for instance, that Swift’s main career success has been playing a knight in a series of pizza commercials. When we actually see this commercial later on, Bloom’s resemblance to his character Balian of Ibelin from Kingdom of Heaven is unmistakable. He also wins a crap job in the film’s initial scenes as a store sign spinner wearing “elven” clothing, which recalls his prominent role in one of the most famous and influential trilogies of all time.

Swift’s attempts to break away from such parts also feels like it has a connection to Bloom’s real career. Early on, Swift’s ambition to play “authentic, gritty characters” who “plumb the depths of the human experience” is treated with derision even by his own agent. He’s told that nobody buys him as the “intense guy who has seen horrors.” Bloom received similar sentiments for his own efforts to branch out once his various blockbuster franchises had run their course. His performances in Kingdom of Heaven and Elizabethtown, while not reviled, were received tepidly—with many critics feeling like he lacked the requisite gravitas. Although it’s just speculation on my part, I do wonder if this is the reason Swift’s disenchantment with his career feels so affecting throughout Deep Cover. Perhaps Bloom could relate to it not just on a theoretical level.

“Let’s see De Niro do this!” Swift bellows during Deep Cover, right before hilariously cutting up a body to demonstrate his commitment to his undercover “role.” While intended as a straight up joke, this line is what triggered me to think critically about Bloom and what he accomplishes in Deep Cover. I realized quickly that De Niro, of course, could and already has done what Bloom pulls off here. In Meet the Parents, for instance, De Niro displayed disarming comedic chops and effortlessly showed how a real-life persona can be woven into a performance to maximize its impact. But that doesn’t take away from Bloom’s achievement. From a surprising affinity for comedy to a sharp, self-reflexive streak, Bloom reveals that he has talent that his earlier career did not prefigure. And hopefully it portends there are additional interesting performances he’ll give in the years to come.