“Argylle”: Matthew Vaughn’s Latest Spy Film

The director of the Kingsman franchise brings us a spy film full of action and comedy.

Summary

Elly Conway (Bryce Dallas Howard), the introverted and anxious author of a series of best-selling espionage novels, leads a quiet existence, dedicated to her work and to Alfie, her cat.

But when the plots of Elly’s books, starred by invincible agent Argylle, begin to mirror the actions of a real spy organization, she will become the target of dangerous people.

A short trip to overcome a creative block turns into a quest to recover the “masterkey,” encrypted information that can take an entire organization, known as the Division, down for good.

Who can be trusted? How could her imagination come up with such a precise idea of the Division’s plans? Elly must figure out the answers before it’s too late.

A Fun Ride

To be honest, I didn’t have a lot of faith in this movie, but it was a pleasant surprise. While far from perfect, Argylle has a main quality that makes it work decently well: It’s a lot of fun. The film tries to give a crazy spin to the typical spy film, and actually achieves it…sometimes.

The performances of Bryce Dallas Howard and Sam Rockwell manage to carry the story, with Henry Cavill playing agent Argylle, and the addition of some other prominent figures in minor roles.

The characters are not extremely well constructed, but the focus of the director was on the action scenes, which I forgive, because some of them I really enjoyed. The selection of music is great for these scenes in particular, giving them this extra edge of craziness.

Still, I believe the film could have benefited from a better script. The story is entertaining, and it has some surprising twists that are interesting, but it gets carried away with that, neglecting some necessary development in the plot and characters.

Sometimes It’s Too Much

After an hour and a half, the fun plot twists start to become increasingly less fun. The ideal running time for this would have been maybe two hours; the last thirty minutes felt unnecessary.

This last part includes two very long fighting sequences. In one of them, both Elly and Aidan face their enemies in a musical number, shooting them while performing a choreography. A few minutes after that, Elly attaches two blades to her boots, and kills some more bad guys while figure skating.

I’m on board with the movie being crazy and nonsensical, but when you overdo it, things get boring. At that point, I was ready for the story to come to an end, instead of leaving the theater wanting more.

Fan-Baiting?

The promotion of this film relied on all the well-known names on the cast, but in reality, their appearances are brief, almost cameos.

Henry Cavill, who was at the front of the promotional posters, and is featured in many scenes in the trailers, is in there for roughly fifteen minutes.

John Cena, Samuel L. Jackson, Sofia Boutella, Ariana DeBose, have maybe five minutes each. Dua Lipa’s appearance is basically what we have already seen in the trailer, and her character is killed in the first minutes of the film. It reminded me of what was done with Taylor Swift in Amsterdam.

Now, I don’t consider having famous people in general make a cameo, or taking a small part to be inherently bad (though it’s becoming too common for my liking), but using it as a marketing strategy and being dishonest about what you’re selling, is not very ethical.

I was expecting Brice Dallas Howard to be the protagonist, so I wasn’t disappointed, but part of the audience may have paid for the ticket thinking something different. That kind of strategy may work for an opening weekend, but deceiving your audience is never free. We’ll have to wait and see what people think about this.

Not A Great Start

Argylle did not have a great start in theaters. Up to this moment, the reports for the first weekend show a worldwide box office of $35.000.000, a small number considering the production budget amounted to $200.000.000, according to The Numbers.

While most critics have picked Argylle apart, I think the success of this movie will depend on what the general audience says after this first weekend.

Would I recommend it? Depending on what you’re looking for. If you expect something award-worthy or pay to see some of the actors, maybe you will be disappointed. But if you’re up for something full of action and comedy, and a little bizarre, you will have an amazing time.

I certainly enjoyed it. It’s been a while since I have laughed so much in a theater. Also, when you watch with other people, you can measure the film’s performance by the atmosphere in the room, and the people around me were having a blast.

In a post-credit scene, we get to see a young Argylle, teasing a connection to the Kingsman franchise. Everyone who was already leaving, stopped in their tracks to watch it.

Even though this first weekend’s performance is falling below expectations, I still have some hope for this film moving forward.