A self-satisfied smugness pervades the 139-minute runtime of Matthew Vaughn’s twisty, overstuffed spy caper, Argylle (2024), which somehow confuses itself as being kitsch.
The opening showcases the titular character, Agent Aubrey Argylle (Henry Cavill), a handsome, bulky mannequin strutting the dance floor in a club, spouting unenthused lines to a sultry LaGrange (Dua Lipa). After the two engage in the “whirlybird,” the club turns into a trap. Of course, Argylle escapes with the help of his sidekick, Wyatt, and a tech whiz, Keira (John Cena and Ariana DeBose in roles so thankless and thinly developed that it feels more of an insult to their talents).
This sticky situation escalates into a clunky, shoddily-edited chase sequence. A title card flashes to indicate that they’re in Greece, but the scenery more resembles a green screen with a polished Google image of Greece. And if the special effects are unconvincing in depicting locations, it’s far worse in action sequences where cars bounce off buildings like rubber. Here is Vaughn’s demented attempt to harken back to cheesy action spy films; his way to wink, wink, nudge, nudge the audience in a self-deprecating manner by aping James Bond, where sexy people and ridiculous chase stunts become heightened by thrilling globe-trotting espionage and hackneyed dialogue. Think back to Pierce Brosnan’s tsunami surfing in Die Another Day (2002) without the nostalgic-colored glasses.
The opening is a fantasy inside of a book. Elly Conway (Bryce Dallas Howard) is reading the last chapter of the fifth entry of her Argyle series at a book reading. Screenwriter Jason Fuchs upends expectations and provides a meta-narrative to contrast the high-stakes fantasy of the spy genre to the drudgery of the writing process: research, interviewing, and writer’s block. Yet what soon ensues is not just the banal trappings of Elly’s spy novels but the worst tendencies of Matthew Vaughn.
Elly lives an isolated, introverted life where her idea of a “hot date” is a night of writing with her cat, Alfie (played by Vaughn’s cat, Chip, though half the time it resembles a flobby, zombified CGI creation). Currently, Elly is struggling with the last chapter of her book, the fifth installment in her “Argylle” series. The film periodically flashes to how she envisions Cavill’s Argylle in real-time as she tries to think about what Argylle would say and do in her novels. On a train ride to her mother, Ruth (Catherine O’Hara), Elly encounters a blabbermouth scrawny man, Aiden (Sam Rockwell), who reveals himself as an actual spy tasked with retrieving Elly.
It turns out Elly’s novels have predicted actual events in the world of spy intelligence, and Ritter (Bryan Cranston), the head of an evil organization named the Division, wants her to finish the book. Elly has information regarding the whereabouts of a silver bullet, a plot device she has used in her books, that would expose the Division to the public. Now, Elly must figure out the last chapter of her book to help Aiden bring down the benign organization.
What ensues is an insufferably stretched-out throwback film that pits Elly and Aiden on a grand travelogue of bloodless gunplay, stilted comedic one-liners, a cat stuffed in a backpack and Vaughn’s self-congratulatory style of filmmaking. His camera turns and shifts only to make the dull action sequences seem exciting; in reality, they’re flatly lit and shot in extreme close-ups to hide the scrappy stunt work. The fiery gunfighting and butt-kicking try to rouse and jolt the audience out of the tedious plot mechanics (and twists!) that become numbing.
What worked with Vaughn’s previous high-quality efforts in Kick-Ass (2010) or Kingsman: The Secret Service (2014) is that the glitzy, explosive violence was tangible and bloody. It perfectly complimented the spirited, crazed cinematography and show tunes vibe of The Dickie’s Banana Splits Hit-Girl introduction or Skynrd’s Free Bird Church massacre.
In Argylle, the trick is tired and unfazed, saddled with a PG-13 rating that has dulled Vaughn’s sensibilities to punctuate every bullet shot or butt kicked. The violence becomes child’s play as Vaughn’s direction feels uninspired rather than bold. Nothing comes close to Colin Firth rampaging in a church or Hit-Girl slicing gangsters. Argylle is tame and docile, refraining from Vaughn’s gonzo stylization that has (for the most part) enhanced his films.
The film would be slightly bearable if the cheaply rendered CGI environments and objects didn’t detract from the elaborate set pieces. One sequence involves a character skating over crude oil, but for all the acrobatic twists and turns, I couldn’t help but feel jaded when it’s clear the actor is skating over nothing. It’s airless; there is no danger. The oil looks incredibly phony and garish. Aiden and Elly are in no danger because the threats are hollow, and the stakes are meaningless.
For as much color and smokescreen Vaughn wants to throw at the audience—quite literally throwing candy-colored smoke bombs toward the camera—it serves no purpose other than to stimulate a bored, listless audience. Aiden and Elly team up to take on a pool of bad guys whose aim resembles stormtroopers, yet the tension is for naught when the screen lacks depth. The environment is void of any tangible object or action happening. It’s a Saturday morning cartoon without the zest and vibrancy of animation.
Speaking of no danger, Cranston scowls and shouts without any threat of menace. The real villain must be how many times Fuchs can one-up the audience for how demonstrably inane the surprise twists strain credulity. Characters cross, double-cross, even triple-cross, and it all feels fatuous. The cast, while high-caliber and capable, are given scraps of characterization. Most rely on looks and winks as if their sly smiles can make up for the empty writing.
Rockwell and Howard feel like the only ones trying their damndest to create meaningful chemistry. Howard plays up the scared, nervous, fidgety woman to funny effect, where her reactions to death and carnage are palpable. Elly’s way of dissociating is flash-exchanging Rockwell to Cavill’s body in mid-action, seemingly to help cope with the fact that her fantasy is bleeding into the reality she never expected.
It’s a neat visual idea that becomes incomprehensible once the script’s multiple twists start piling on top of each other. And the more that’s revealed about Elly and her relationship to the spy world, the more laughable her transformation is from humdrum writer to action hero.
Rockwell is always a charming presence, even when saddled with dreck. He holds a tremendous screen presence, and it’s a nice change of pace to catapult the Oscar-winning character actor to the forefront of a $200 million blockbuster. There’s a fun remark about how he works effectively as a spy since he’s so unassuming in stature that it’s simple to hide in a crowd.
The rest of the cast is virtually non-existent; not even O’Hara’s mother character could escape the script’s constant need to wow the audience with shocking reveals. Kudos to Samuel L. Jackson for getting paid to have an exposition stroll with Elly in the third act and sit in a chair to watch a Lakers game. That last part sounds very cynical, but this whole film (and perhaps Vaughn’s intention to turn this into a franchise) is an exercise in futility. Nothing new is uncovered. Vaughn’s appreciation of spy films and fixation on repackaging his fondness for the genre is puzzling, considering he’d done so excellently in the first Kingsman.
As the film neared a close, it finally clicked what Argylle represents: a long-running gamble of streaming tech companies to burn hundreds of millions of dollars into vacuous scripts that will initiate potential franchises. Argylle has siphoned off the same algorithms that produced Red Notice (2021), The Grey Man (2022), and Ghosted (2023). However, with those films, there was the comfortable luxury of watching them at home, where you can scroll your phone through the boring parts, do housework chores while they play in the background, or pet lovers could use their animals for emotional support. We cinephiles bemoan streaming companies not releasing their movies to theaters, but perhaps we underestimated the comfort of watching over-bloated, tacky trash at home.
The former three films are offensive in their construction through some A.I. engineering to guarantee maximum eyeballs by wasting hundreds of millions of dollars with nothing to show for it. Argylle is a different type of offense. The film asks you to drive to the theater, pay for a ticket, sit in an auditorium, and subject yourself to wasting your time with meaningless images and sounds. You’re Alex strapped in the theater in A Clockwork Orange (1971)—unable to leave because you made the trip and effort to see the film, unable to distract yourself as it would be disrespectful to the people around you, and watching ghastly images flood your retinas.
Vaughn’s latest film is no worse than any of the aforementioned over-budgeted undertakings. Still, it’s particularly egregious when you make more of an effort to watch the film than the people who made it.
Review Courtesy of Amritpal Rai
Feature Image Credit to Universal Pictures and Apple TV+ via IMDb
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