Argylle is a silly waste of (too much) time and (too much) talent
Before we get too far into this review, have you seen the newest Apple laptops and desktops? If not, don’t worry, because Argylle will show you. Yes, the new Apple Original Film, the spy thriller Argylle, is very much a commercial for Apple products. But that’s the weakest of my criticisms. The best thing about Argylle being released is that we don’t have to sit through its excruciating trailer anymore, which seemed to precede every movie in existence for the past four months. The worst thing about Argylle is that the full-length film is just as excruciating.
Argylle is director Matthew Vaughn’s (Layer Cake, X-Men: First Class, Kingsman: The Secret Service) eighth feature film. He has a distinct style: kinetic, colorful, and blending complex choreographed violence with witty banter and larger-than-life characters. Argylle is the worst case scenario of his style run amok. The story follows a spy novelist, Elly Conway (Bryce Dallas Howard), who writes a spy novel series centered on a secret agent named Argylle (played in fantasy sequences by Henry Cavill). On the brink of finishing the fifth book in the series, Conway is approached on a train by Aiden (Sam Rockwell), an actual spy who whisks her (and her cat, Alfie) on a globe-trotting getaway from a rogue syndicate chasing them. This happens because, you see, Conway’s novels contain plot details that mirror the syndicate’s real-world actions, thus exposing them. In theory, this is a fun concept for a movie.
In its execution, however, Argylle fails at nearly everything. First, it looks bad. The CGI is cartoonish and the lighting is distractingly bright and unnatural. Second, the script is cringeworthy. Sincere moments fall laughably flat and the film’s second half is filled with illogical, unbelievable, and frankly, dumb plot twists. Third, Argylle boasts a star-studded cast, but they all try in vain to make their characters memorable, if not sensible. Sam Rockwell is the only one who leaves the film relatively unscathed, channeling a lot of goofy charm into his spy character and getting most of the good lines. The rest of the cast — including Howard and Cavill, but also John Cena, Dua Lipa, Ariana DeBose, Bryan Cranston, Samuel L. Jackson, and Catherine O’Hara — either fall victim to the script’s unbalanced tones, or lack ample screen time. And fourth, the film spends nearly two-and-a-half hours trying to make sense of itself, and in doing so drags on and on and on. When the credits finally rolled after a relentless string of bogus action set pieces, I sighed audibly, and no promise of a post-credits scene was going to keep me in my seat for one second longer.
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Argylle is in theaters on Friday, February 2nd.
