TL;DR – A film that makes one of the worst mistakes it can: constantly remind you of better films you could be watching.

Post-Credit Scene – There is a mid-credit scene.

Disclosure – I paid to watch this film

Argylle Review –

Today is a bit of an awkward review because I am exploring a work from people both in front of and behind the camera who I have deeply loved before. However, today, I am looking at a film that fails at almost every single step. It failed so badly that I had moved from frustration to disappointment, to wholly checked out by the time I rolled my eyes at the mid-credit scene. With that in mind, we will explore just what went wrong because, like many things, it was not just one road bump that led to this.

So to set the scene, we open with Agent Argylle (Henry Cavill) infiltrating the lair of Lagrange (Dua Lipa) and initiating a pretty intense dance-off. However, Lagrange knew he was coming and what he looked like because someone in his organisation was a mole. In fact, it could be one of his teammates, Keira (Ariana DeBose) or Wyatt (John Cena). However, just as the big reveal happens, we discover that this story is not real. It is a novel written by noted author Elly Conway (Bryce Dallas Howard), whose Argylle series of spy novels are best sellers. However, as Elly takes a train ride with her cat Alfie (Chip) to her mother Ruth (Catherine O’Hara), she is interrupted by the unkempt Aidan Wilde (Sam Rockwell), who might be leading her into a world she wrote about in fiction, that just might be real.

Look, I am not going to be very complimentary here. However, there were hints of a good film here and there, and I do think those moments should be pointed out. Seriously, bless Sam Rockwell, because boy, that man is trying to give this film some energy to go on. His enthusiasm is what helps get you through a movie that I have heard people have walked out on, and I understand that. The stunt team are putting in a strong effort here. While most of the action scenes don’t work, it is not their participation that hurts it. Also, there are a couple of moments when you think the film is about to coalesce into something interesting finally, some laughs with the cat, moments where Bryce Dallas Howard is finally given something to do, and one action scene towards the end involving gas. However, most of these moments are in the trailer, and when you see the film, you understand why.

One of the main problems with Argylle is that it is full of good ideas. However, the execution of those ideas doesn’t work here or might not ever work in a visual medium. For example, there is a fight scene where Elly is watching along, and she keeps skipping in her mind from the reality of Aidan to the fantasy of Argylle. Conceptionally, this is an exciting idea. However, in practice, the way the fight was staged, they needed to insert ‘blinks’ to make the transitions work, and this was so jarring that I think it started to give me some motion sickness. They added the blinks even when they didn’t need to because the transition could have been hidden by the train, making it all fall apart.      

To add to this, the sort of fish-out-of-water plotline with Elly always felt weirdly positioned. Part of that is because, while respect to Ms Howard for making the best of the situation, her character is poorly written. With her reduced to sitting back and just glumly reacting to things. But more than that, you can feel that the camera has not been well positioned, including one moment that verged on an upskirt shot, which was deeply uncomfortable. Some of the costume choices just did not help, like I am not sure who Henry Cavill upset so severely that he got lumped in with that haircut, which actively detracted from the character.

However, to really dissect what went wrong here, we need to explore the narrative, and given the type of narrative this is, you cannot do that without spoilers. Thus, there is a [SPOILER ALERT] for the rest of this review. I am a fan of spy films, and it does not matter if they are aiming for the more serious or silly ends of the spectrum. Indeed, our director this week is well versed in this territory with the well-liked Kingsman films. But if you are going to work in this space, you need to be presenting something of substance, and just throwing twists at your audience is not a substitute for substance. At best, what you will get is a diminishing return after each twist. But more than that, what it shows is that your narrative can not support itself unless you try to engage the audience artificially every 20 minutes or so.

Worse still, each of those twists I have seen done better in many different films, and they were implemented so poorly that I kept getting reminded of them during the watch time. The novelist who actually stumbles across something in the real world that puts her in the sights of villains was explored more interestingly with The Lost City. They have a retread of Spider-Man meeting The Vulture from Spider-Man: Homecoming. Indeed, all the big reveal made me do is wish that I was watching Geena Davis in The Long Kiss Goodnight. Even then, the film was not finished, with two more twists [edit: I just remembered another, there were three], and then another in the mid-credit scene, which made me annoyed because I will have to add this to my Cinematic Universes page. Each new twist started to undermine everything that had come before because it just made you more perplexed how no one caught this before production.  

Frustrations with the narrative can be a big problem with a film. However, if you have good production, it might be able to make up for it. You will not be surprised to discover that this did not happen with Argylle. I have seen films like Army of the Dead or Suicide Squad that had some questionable needle drops. However, this is the first film that I have watched, at least as far as I can remember, where every single needle drop failed. Not a single musical choice worked. I mentioned that the action scenes were a mess, but goodness, were they a mess. The opening number had such prominent digital constructions that I thought that I had accidentally walked into The Adventures of Tintin.

Then there are the small things like a henchman being shot in the forehead and then falling in clear view of the camera without a scratch. It was clear that the visual effects team was not given enough time with this film. Indeed, even the one good action scene I mentioned in my third paragraph outstayed its welcome and was gone better in Birds of Prey and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn. Then we get off the narrative inconsistencies, like how this film’s triumphant celebration might be the most significant environmental catastrophe ever seen in the Persian Gulf. Entire portions of this film only work because of the most obscure contrivances and a hope that the mystery box moment would have a real payoff, which it didn’t. Unfortunately, this is not helped by the hybrid nature of the film, in which the two sides never gelled together. When your movie is failing at both a macro and micro level, then things have gone wrong.      

In the end, do we recommend Argylle? Unfortunately, not. I have enjoyed all of these people’s work in the past, so I don’t know what went wrong that led to what happened here. However, what we did get was a frustrating mess. If you liked Argylle, we would recommend to you Atomic Blonde.

By Brian MacNamara: You can follow Brian on Twitter Here, when he’s not chatting about Movies and TV, he’ll be talking about International Relations, or the Solar System.

Have you watched Argylle?, let us know what you thought in the comments below, feel free to share this review on any of the social medias and you can follow us Here. Check out all our past reviews and articles Here, and have a happy day. 


Credits – All images were created by the cast, crew, and production companies of Argylle
Directed by – Matthew Vaughn
Written by – Jason Fuchs
Music by – Lorne Balfe
Cinematography by – George Richmond
Edited by – Lee Smith & Tom Harrison-Read
Production/Distribution Companies – Apple Original Films, Marv Studios, Cloudy Productions & Universal Pictures.
Starring – Henry Cavill, Ariana DeBose, Dua Lipa, Richard E. Grant, Jing Lusi & John Cena
Starring – Bryce Dallas Howard, Sam Rockwell, Chip, Catherine O’Hara, Bryan Cranston, Samuel L. Jackson, Sofia Boutella, Louis Partridge & Ben Daniels with Tomás Paredes, Rob Delaney, Jason Fuchs, Jing Lusi, Adetomiwa Edun, Stanley Morgan, David Bedella
Rating – Australia: M; Canada: PG; Germany: 12; New Zealand: M; United Kingdom: 12A; United States: PG-13