Instead, Howard opted to take a page out of history rather than the sketchbook of a 9-year old boy. In 1976, Lauda almost died after crashing in the second lap of the German Grand Prix, which the hotheaded Hunt would go on to win. Suffering a coma and bad burns, Lauda was back at it six weeks later determined to beat Hunt in several races. The movie will be in theaters this fall, but you can just go to Wikipedia now to see how it ends.

Never mind. I don’t even care.

Well, as these seven films demonstrate, going undercover is definitely NOT easy, and as Murphy’s Law dictates, anything that can go wrong will. So enjoy these seven tales of deep cover operatives looking on haplessly as everything goes to hell.

Yay!

21 Jump Street

Any undercover operation that involves a severed penis does not end well. It’s almost like these police officers are incompetent! Why on earth would the police hire people who can’t do their job well? But it’s a pretty funny film, so let’s just forget about all the crappy things that happened to the characters in the movie and be happy for their “success,” ya know?

Reservoir Dogs

Undercover assignments do not get more f*cked up than this one did. When you find a cop tied to a chair, a man dancing to Stealer’s Wheel while cutting the cop’s ear off, and he’s about to light him on fire, it’s time to reevaluate the actions you took to find yourself in that very moment.

Granted, the cop getting the Van Gogh treatment wasn’t undercover, but it’s hard to say that anything in this film really went well for anyone. Here’s the big takeaway: Going undercover is a form of lying, and you should NEVER LIE.

It’s just that simple. Lying is crappy behavior, even to catch bad guys.

Kindergarten Cop

I guess technically this assignment went off without a hitch from the police department’s perspective, but I would say that it was less than spectacular for the parents of the kindergartners. For one thing, the guy wasn’t a teacher. I understand that it’s just kindergartners, but the fact is that these kids are entitled to an education, and Arnold Schwarzenegger is not a certified teacher. Certified badass? Maybe. But not a teacher.

There should have been a waiver that parents had to sign that said “I don’t mind if an undercover cop teaches my child for a few weeks so that he can find a criminal.”

Of course, though, on of those parents was the criminal, so that could have been a red flag.

Rush

Rule #1 of going undercover: Don’t get really, really addicted to cocaine. Ok. Maybe “don’t let your badge fall out of your pocket” is rule #1, but “don’t get addicted to cocaine” is pretty high up there on the list of rules. We’ve all seen movies where the protagonist has to kill a guy or snort something to prove that he’s “down.” Well, here’s the fall out. It could have gone either way though. Maybe Jason Patric’s character could have dealt with cocaine in moderation and just become a really run party guy that occasionally did some blow. That didn’t happen though.

The Departed

SPOILER ALERTS:

When pretty much everyone dies at the end, it’s hard to deem your operation a success. Granted, Mark Wahlberg’s character lived, but I don’t think anyone really liked him that much anyway. They did manage to take down Costello, but that was actually the work of a double agent, one of his very own men.

I could spend two paragraphs or so explaining what went down and when, but when you’ve got two moles on different sides chasing each other down to steal a glance at the other person, something has gone wrong. Further, when the psychological toll on the state police operative is so heavy that he’s driven to pills and sleeping with his shrink, maybe it’s time to rethink the corporate culture of the Massachusetts state police.

And finally, police captain’s really shouldn’t get tossed out of windows.

Point Break

Sure, it worked out in the end, but when your FBI agent has to jump out of a plane without a parachute to catch a the ring leader of a bank robbing team, something has probably gone horribly wrong.

On the plus side, this operation allowed operative Johnny Utah to become a pretty good surfer (awesome!) and fall in love with Lori Petty (eh). But that doesn’t outweigh the fact that Utah made the rookie mistake of “getting in to deep,” and becoming not only friends, but weird surfer soul mates with Bodhi and company.

Perhaps if he’d infiltrated a gang of Rollerbladers, he wouldn’t have enjoyed the lifestyle quite so much.

The Bourne Franchise

Damn you Treadstone! If you can’t trust a secret government agency, who can you trust? After seeing all three films, I still have next to know idea of what the original mission was, but considering most everyone got killed and Jason Bourne is leaving and never coming back, I doubt that the U.S. government will chalk this up as a “W.”

They lost a good man in Clive Owen, too!

The plan is for Howard and Hemsworth to get moving on this one early next year, seeing as how the Dark Tower project doesn’t really seem to be an obstacle to avoid in the near future. Thor 2 is set for July of 2013, so expect Hemsworth to move straight to that after completing Rush.

Rush focuses on the racing career of Niki Lauda, specifically his racing career and rivalry with British racer James Hunt. No others have been cast yet, but if Hemsworth is playing a guy named “Niki Lauda,” let’s just all assume that Alex Pettyfer is playing the other dude.

Howard will be joined in this production by David Koepp, who will produce and oversee the script written by John Kamps. And don’t worry, Imagine partner Brian Grazer will be producing as well, lest he get his feelings hurt. However, the film won’t get rolling in the near future, as Howard remains steadfast that The Dark Tower will film early next year, either with Universal or another studio willing to take on the production. Presumably, that means Rush will, along with Spy, take a backseat to The Dark Tower for quite some time.

While the Spy vs. Spy news is still breaking and appears to be a ways off, one thing is certain: This will not ensure that the “Arrested Development” movie gets moving any quicker.

Deadline describes the story as a “physical and highly visual action comedy,” which raises more questions than it does answers, but at least it won’t be a gritty reboot or an origin story. Oh, God. I hope it’s not an origin story. Do we really need a reason why these guys are after each other?

It’s looking likely that his next gig will be the direction of Rush, a biopic of Formula 1 driver Niki Lauda, who nearly died in a violent 1976 crash. The story will also examine the rivalry between the Austrian Lauda and British driver James Hunt. So it’s sorta like Days of Thunder. Sorta.

Talks are early on this one, but Howard seems to have gotten a taste for more action-oriented films between this, the abandoned Amnesty, and Dark Tower, which should come as little surprise considering the beating he took for his latest, The Dilemma.

If Kevin James pops up as a fat race car driver, I’m not only giving up on Howard, but people in general.

The second film on his desk blotter is Rush, a Formula One racing drama written by Peter Morgan. The story follows the near-deadly 1976 season of driver Niki Lauda. The screenplay also details Lauda’s rivalry with driver James Hunt, both on and off the track. It also deals with the 1976 German Grand Prix where Lauda spun out of control and burst into flames, causing him to nearly burn to death and lose his right ear. But that didn’t stop him from pulling himself out of bed to face Hunt in several more races. Which he lost. So, yeah, that’s kind of a bummer ending. Maybe they should tell the tale backwards, Memento style.

And finally, the third film Greengrass is considering is a secret. So we’d better not catch you snooping around in Mom and Dad’s closet. You’ll ruin the surprise. (Vulture)

In the video, Segel gets Rudd backstage passes to the local Rush concert and backstage shenanigans occur. A sandwich is eaten peculiarly, there’s some mandatory ‘awkward tension’ and an admittedly cool-looking double guitar plays a key role. Also, some bittersweet news: “totes magotes” is spoken in the video, but not “Dude Von Dudenstein,” “Sweet Sweet Hangin,” and sadly, not one squiznot was popped for the entire 5:50 minutes. All you squiznot poppers out there will just have to keep writing that line into your I Love You, Man slash fiction. (/Film)