The world has been plagued by the question “who is Agent Argylle?” as we’ve watched the trailer for the new Matthew Vaughn spy dramadey since what feels like, the dawn of time. Every film that I have seen and reviewed has been proceeded by this trailer, teasing me with flashy visuals and a Dua Lipa cameo. The day finally arrived for the release of this film, I sat down and prepared to finally be able to answer the fateful question.
Post viewing, I have left with more questions, most of them being “why?”. The film is close to a two and a half hour runtime, with a stacked cast and a stuffed plot. We get a contortionist style story, twisting and turning every chance it gets, trying to keep the audience on their toes, but only really keeping us in our seats. The film starts off well, feeling like it knows what it’s doing and then completely loses track, trailing off into pretty uninteresting spy antics and a screen full of characters that you have no idea what to think about.
The film begins with a flat-topped Henry Cavill in the role of Argylle, entering a speakeasy type establishment, greeted by femme fatale in a poor wig, Dua Lipa (Dula Peep). She seduces him with a spin around dance move that sets the ridiculous tone of the film in a really promising way. She soon reveals to him that she is on to Argylle’s tracks and escapes his grasp before he can capture her for the information he is looking for. We then get a stylised motorbike / golf cart street chase, ended by John Cena grabbing Dua Lipa off the bike, and into an integration. It's at this point that the film reveals itself, Elly Conway (Bryce Dallas Howard) is writing the plot of the film we were just watching, and we now see her living her life as the author of these books.
Soon after we are introduced to her, we find her in a little bit of trouble, as Agent Aidan Wilde (Sam Rockwell) stops her from being kidnapped on a train to visit her mum. He then takes her with him, to avoid further capture by the rival spy organisation. As it turns out, The plot of Elly’s books have been manifesting in real life and the spies involved want to know what happens next, before the opposition finds out.
At this point, I have to be honest that I cannot remember what both sides are actually looking for, money or a set of files. Could be both…
From there, the story absolutely goes off in every direction it could, betrayals from all sides and every which way, new storylines, character introductions, callbacks, references and silly action set pieces.
Some of these elements are fun, but in the context of the whole film, they mostly just become a little bit exhausting. The film has so much packed in it, that it is hard to keep up the enthusiasm for the fun oil slicked, ice skating fight scene that you’re given at the two hour mark. Things like this are wasted on the film as we fight to keep interested.
The thing that holds most of the film together are the central performances, Bryce Dallas Howard and Sam Rockwell both play their parts really well. Bryce Dallas Howard gets less to work with as Elly Conway is the fish out of water type character, mostly reacting to the shocking events going on around her, while Sam Rockwell’s Agent Wilde has to a lot of the heavy lifting in the action of the film, getting them out of the precarious situations.
A lot of these precarious action sequences are intercut with swapping out Agent Wilde for the fictionalised Agent Argylle that Henry Cavill plays. His suave approach to the fights does contrast well with the chaotic nature of Wilde. This works particularly well during the first fight sequence on the train and a later scene in an abandoned apartment.
The action in general is presented pretty well, even if the stakes never felt too high. The setups and set pieces felt unique and well choreographed, some fun visuals to look at while you question the plot. Towards the very end, they do seem to get a little more “dancey” which I don’t think worked well for me when the rest of the film lacked this style of fight scene. I can see the justification for their inclusion but the sudden switch up in style really took me by surprise and not in a way that I enjoyed.
The slick action is helped with equally as slick camera work, knowing how to present a scene, from a conversation to a fight. The film never tries to overly stylise a conversation of mute down a fight scene. It understands what we’re looking for in each segment of the film and without too much juxtaposition that the switch up feels disjointed.
The soundtrack of the film, along with the score felt a little generic, sometimes the “spy” type music worked in the times that the film felt aware. Other times, it seemed like they shrugged at what to fill the silence with and went with the classic, old slow needle drop or basic synthy spy beat.
I originally planned to write this review as a reflection on the movie, have it be about 5,000 words and meander through liking and disliking things until you got to this point and had no idea how I actually felt about the film. However, I don’t have unlimited time and once I got going on the dislikes that I have, they felt too obvious to backtrack on. I value my integrity above all else, that was of course my main motivation not to deceive.
Argylle is a film that I won’t be coming back to to watch, unlike some of the other Matthew Vaughn films, like Kick Ass or The Kingsmen. I think with the right material, his unique approach to action can be fun and light. This film, was just not that. Painfully trying to keep the audience guessing, instead, just stealing their time to deliver an unpredictable incoherent ending. Also, spoiler alert for movie marketing but it seems as though Vaughn is looking to create the Argylle story as standalone action films, based on the books from this film. I do think we could have skipped this story and jumped right into the plot of the books, but its hard to complain when we may have more Henry Cavill flat top to look forward to in the years to come.
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