If there’s one thing all spy films love, it’s throwing everyday people into the deep end of international intrigue.  Think Cary Grant’s ad exec dodging crop dusters in North by Northwest, or Audrey Hepburn’s unsuspecting tourist tangled in conspiracy in Charade.  Even Melissa McCarthy in Spy starts as a desk-bound CIA analyst before being reluctantly thrust into fieldwork.  There’s something enjoyably gripping about watching regular folks navigate a world of shadow agencies, high stakes, and deadly assassins, all while dodging bullets in gadget-filled cars.  Neil Burger’s Inheritance clearly knows this playbook—it just doesn’t know how to add anything new to it.

The last person Maya (Phoebe Dynevor) and her sister (Kersti Bryan) expected to see at the funeral for their mother was their estranged father, Sam (Rhys Ifans, Nyad).  Long divorced, the exes rarely spoke, and Sam has been totally absent throughout his ex-wife’s terminal illness, leaving Maya as the sole caretaker for her dying parent.  Alone and isolated in the apartment she shared with her mother, Maya’s father offers her an opportunity to make quick money overseas. While she has reservations about trusting a man she’s never counted on, she needs the money and agrees. 

Of course, this turns out to be a grave mistake because when Maya learns that her father was once a spy, she suddenly finds herself at the center of an international conspiracy.  In her pursuit of the truth (and her father, who quickly vanishes and is held for ransom), Maya becomes a target and must travel the globe, mastering her father’s skills and unraveling the mysteries of his past.  It’s the kind of head-spinning espionage adventure with breakneck turns, revelatory jolts, and a careening duplicity that should send us tumbling down a rabbit hole of increasingly wild discoveries.  Instead, we get a connect-the-dots exercise where most of the dots are already lined up for us.  Think of it like ordering what looks like an exciting new dish at your favorite late-night fast food restaurant, only to find it’s just a regular menu item you’ve eaten dozens of times only with a different name and half as satisfying.

Thank goodness for Dynevor, though.  Fresh from winning hearts in Bridgerton and going outside its comfortable confines with 2023’s scorching Fair Play, she brings Maya a deeper sense of purpose that the screenplay doesn’t always provide.  Her transformation from a bewildered daughter unable to fully process the loss of one parent to a reluctant operative tracking down the other feels authentic, even as the story around her follows increasingly predictable paths.  Ifans makes the most of his supporting role as a solid but underwhelming foil.  His talents deserve more than acting as a plot device and its a disservice to not spend a little time making him a more fully realized character.

Burger, who’s given us everything from the philosophical sci-fi of Voyagers to the teen-dystopia thrills of Divergent down to the heartwarming buddy dynamics of The Upside, seems unsure whether he’s making a thoughtful drama about family secrets or a pulse-pounding spy thriller.  The script he co-wrote with Olen Steinhauer (All the Old Knives) lacks the essential twists and turns for this genre that keep audiences engaged.   The result is a film that never fully commits to either path.  It shows its hand early on, and you spend the next forty-five minutes hoping something will come along and surprise you…but alas, it’s exactly what you think it will be. 

The cinematography by Jackson Hunt tries its best to create suspense, following Maya like an unseen threat, while Nick Carew’s editing keeps things moving even when the story starts dragging its feet.  To its credit, Inheritance could be classified as one of those funky experiments in a film that sometimes works visually but is let down by its narrative.  Filming completely on an iPhone allowed the filmmakers to save time and prep and kept shooting time to a minimum. Still, it also put the movie in a specific time and place that made it of the moment and will make it hard to withstand the years of technological advances ahead of us.  For a film that is constantly in motion and filmed in New York City, Delhi, Seoul, and Cairo, it looks good and shows the continued potential for filmmaking to go beyond the impossible.

The frustrating thing is that you can see the better movie lurking beneath the surface.  At a time when shows like The Americans can be streamed anytime and new episodes of Slow Horses keep coming around the mountain, proving audiences are smart enough to handle complex spy narratives, Inheritance plays it frustratingly safe.  The film has all the ingredients for something special: a talented lead, gorgeous locations, and a premise that should have us questioning everything we see.  Instead, it’s content to be the spy thriller equivalent of a Sunday afternoon nap—pleasant enough while it lasts, a high probability of dozing off at some point, ultimately forgettable.

For a film about uncovering earth-shattering secrets, Inheritance doesn’t trust its audience enough to let us do any real detective work.  While Dynevor proves she’s more than capable of handling complex material, the movie around her works from a spy thriller template with the difficulty settings turned down.  It’s not a bad film—it’s just that in 2024, with viewers who’ve grown up on the intricate plotting of spy dramas like Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy to the recent Black Doves on Netflix, “not bad” isn’t quite good enough.  You might enjoy it on a quiet evening when you’re caught up on your watchlist, but don’t be surprised if you find yourself reaching for your phone to stream one of the classics that inspired it instead.