After directing various British crime films and low-budget superhero flicks, director Matthew Vaughn got to make the movie he’s clearly wanted to make his entire life, “Kingsman: The Secret Service.” Based on the comic book by Mark Miller, who’s work Vaughn previously adapted with the first “Kick-Ass” film, Vaughn’s career quickly became based around the flashy spy franchise, with his next two projects post the first film also being “Kingsman” ones. Now he’s attempting to create his own original series with yet another flashy, action heavy, sillier spin on the spy movie with “Argylle.”
The film stars Bryce Dallas Howard (“Jurassic World,” “Pete’s Dragon (2016)”) as Elly Conway, an author famous for writing a series of spy novels following the exploits of Agent Argylle, played by Henry Cavill (“Man of Steel,” “The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (2015)”). After being attacked by various spy organizations, she’s informed by rogue agent Aidan Wilde, played by Sam Rockwell (“Moon,” “Fosse/Verdon”), that her books have accidentally predicted the future and these agencies and their leaders, such as Director Ritter, played by Bryan Cranston (“Breaking Bad,” “Malcolm in the Middle”), want her to write the next chapter for themselves so they can use it to gain an upper hand.
Rounding out the supporting cast is the likes of Dua Lipa, Ariana DeBose (“West Side Story (2021),” “Wish (2023)”), John Cena (“Blockers,” “The Suicide Squad”), Catherine O’Hara (“Beetlejuice,” “Schitt’s Creek”), and previous Vaughn collaborators Samuel L. Jackson (“Pulp Fiction,” “The Avengers”) and Sofia Boutella (“Star Trek Beyond,” “Rebel Moon”). It's hard to say anyone really excels, as most of them just seem to be on autopilot for the majority of the film. Howard screams a lot as she’s put in danger, Rockwell quips and tries to protect her, Cavill smiles and winks a lot, Cranston grumbles and acts menacingly, etc. Etc.
It’s hard to blame them as the script, from Jason Fuchs (“Pan (2015),” “Wonder Woman (2017)”), acts like a mishmash of every spy cliche in the cinematic landscape with a layer of non-satirical satire lathered on top. There are some truly insane twists throughout and none of them work. When your twist serves to only instill confusion rather than intrigue, that’s when you know things have gone poorly. It isn’t just that some of the twists feel bizarre or nonsensical, but that some of them, like the origin of the name “Argylle”, are just plain stupid.
Visually, the film feels like a mess for a large part. While there are undeniably well choreographed stunts and well executed effects, there’s also so much that feels extremely and blatantly cartoony. A sequence towards the end involving ice skating and a colorful bonanza of violence and multi-colored smoke looks cool in theory, but the execution feels weightless. It has the style and colors of a cartoon but lacks any kind of grounding given the more “serious” nature of the events surrounding it.
That then leads to a film that feels like it has no stakes and therefore a film you cannot get invested in. If Elly and Aidan can dance around through rainbow smoke shooting everyone in sight while smiling like goofballs, why should we feel any weight later when one of their lives in actually in danger? It just ends up resulting in a frustrating film that’s hard to even enjoy in a guilty pleasure way.
It’s interesting to look back on that first “Kingsman” film with the release of “Argylle.” At the time, people heralded Vaughn’s effort as essentially “showing the old farts how the younger kids do spy movies.” With “Argylle,” Vaughn has essentially done a complete 180; the style is weightless and lacks stakes, with a cartoony vibe that clashes with the moments the film tries to be serious, packed full of actors trying their best with a shortchanged script loaded with twists that are either pointless or downright stupid. It feels like the kind of terrible blank check movie you only get to make when your previous films have been extremely successful. There’s never been a better example of the confusing confluences of this film than the fact that it was marketed as “From the Twisted Mind of Matthew Vaughn” and the resulting film is PG-13. 1.5/5
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