“Complexity is good in a spy caper,” you’ll need to chant that phrase for most of the 2 hours and 19 minutes runtime. In the realm of not-quite-right action comedies, there are falters and there are failures, and then there’s Argylle, a bewildering spoof of spy shenanigans from Matthew Vaughn that stumbles and never gets back on its feet. The wild thing is Vaughn also gave us: Layer Cake, Stardust, Kick-Ass, X-Men: First Class, and Kingsman: The Secret Service. I hope that Matthew Vaughn comes back.
Before we go any further, let’s start with the setup. Elly Conway usually spends her nights writing espionage novels, but her quiet life gets turned inside out when she can’t find an ending for her latest book. Her fictional tales about secret agent Argylle and his global missions are playing out in reality. What started as a quiet life is now filled with globe-trotting adventures with a spy named Aidan—who is allergic to cats, especially Ally’s sweet little Alfie. Evading assassins and blurring fiction with reality creates a whirlwind of chaos and Ally needs to survive if she’s going to finish that book. But, with everything she knows becoming everything she doesn’t know, the odds are not in her favor.
It sounds good, right? Argylle kicks off with a promising start, featuring a flip-flopping, molly-whopping action sequence on a train that works like a lit fuse. It introduces us to Bryce Dallas Howard‘s character, Elly who is as endearing as Kathleen Turner in Romancing the Stone. Elly runs into Sam Rockwell on that train I mentioned, and Rockwell is giving the full range of Tom Cruise—from Born on the Fourth of July to Mission Impossible. Meanwhile, we meet Bryan Cranston who plays ‘boss level’ like Heisenberg with an expense account. And as Ally’s mom, Catherine O’Hara emanates Schitt’s Creek sparkle—except she’s happy to be there. Vaughn and screenwriter Jason Fuchs even manage to capture the mind of a fiction author—where every life experience transforms into a scene for your book in real-time.
The setup sounds good because the cast and the first fifth of the movie lead us to expect so much more. We think we’re heading for fireworks. But nope, it’s a bomb. A couple of lines of stale dialogue set off a chain reaction of catastrophically goofy events. Logic is lost and you find yourself unhappily predicting plot points in advance. Imagine a sudden downpour of dumpster water. Do you see it?
Okay, this might sound weird but, if you were at home in your bean bag, with a big bowl of cereal and the perfect amount of oat milk, Argylle might be awkwardly entertaining. You’d have the patience to let this high-budget, low-impact actioner be ridiculous. Unfortunately, you’re not at home where your tolerance is high; you’re in a theater, you’re $65 lighter from concessions alone, and you’re mad because this movie makes your ass itch. Not because it’s all that bad but because it had the potential to be great. The cast, the vehicle; we’ve seen it work before from Romancing the Stone to The Long Kiss Goodnight to the K-drama W. But the filmmakers go for giggles without engagement. At one point they force an entire James Bond credit sequence into the third act, then mix in Dancing with the Stars, and then fire off a series of rainbow smoke bombs that morph into hearts. That is not hyperbole; that is Argylle.
Henry Cavill steps into the role of the titular super spy, Agent Argylle, and he and John Cena work well together. As far as Ariana DeBose, you’ll want more. The same for Dua Lipa. Oh, and remember when the trailer dropped and everyone wondered about the Agent Argylle character design? I bet you’re hoping his weird haircut and ill-fitted velvet jacket pay off in the plot. It’s good to dream, however, when his secrets are revealed, you still don’t know why he styles his hair with a pencil sharpener.
Argylle presents a world where the life of a fiction author intersects with a real-life spy organization. This is true for authors like Ian Fleming and John le Carré, as the screenplay points out. Yet, instead of being intriguing, it’s just messy, with a convoluted plot and thin characters. That’s what makes the post-credits scene, teasing a franchise with a twist, feel more threatening than the bad guys. It’s a spy comedy that lacks thrills, barely flirts with romance, and misdelivers the laughs. Someone put out an APB on pre-2015 Matthew Vaughn, he could have made this work.
