Espionage author Elly Conway (played by Bryce Dallas Howard) has written five books about an Agent Argylle (Henry Cavill) who is trying to take down The Division and its Director (Bryan Cranston). When she decides to go home and see her mom (Catherine O’Hara) to brainstorm how the fifth book should end, she’s met on a train by a fan of her work (Sam Rockwell) who turns out to be an actual spy. He navigates her through the Amtrak train of bad guys sent to kill her and encourages her to write the final chapter. She can’t understand why a real life spy would want her to complete a fictional piece of literature but he explains that whatever she’s writing is coming true and they need her imagination to determine their next steps. Certain situations present themselves and Elly eventually learns the truth through Alfred Solomon (Samuel L. Jackson).
There’s so much to love early on. The opening scene between Cavill, Dua Lipa and John Cena is fun, intriguing and promising. The slow push into Argylle’s lips which turns into an equally slow pull out from Conway’s lips gives the audience a cool little visual cue that this isn’t going to be your typical, run-of-the-mill movie. The further it goes a long, however, it starts to lose it’s luster.
The action scenes, while fun, have their warts. It looks and feels cheap because the use of green screen is very obvious throughout (standing on the roof, driving in the car, etc.) and the CGI explosions are unapologetically rough. The disappointing thing is that the director, Matthew Vaughn, could’ve easily turned these negatives into positives with some clever comedic writing. Instead, Argylle isn’t campy enough to “own” its shortcomings.
The bottom line? Argylle tries too hard to be clever. It’s almost as if the writer (Jason Fuchs) had a really great idea for a story and a plot twist (maybe even two) but then couldn’t just be happy with that. The script tries way too hard to outsmart the audience to the point where we don’t care anymore. The whole thing eventually becomes exhausting and that exhaustion prevents us from having fun.
A film like this, with this cast, should be fun. It should be witty and allow us to savor seeing O’Hara throw quips at her daughter and smile at Cavill flirting with the author that created him and be curious as to how the cat fits into all this. But with so many twists and turns that feel forced, the audience isn’t allowed to do any of that. It becomes work to keep up and Argylle deserved better.
JKG SCORE: 5.5
Untitled Film Project 