Argylle (Matthew Vaughn, 2024)
The Long Kiss Goodnight meets Romancing The Stone in Argylle, a fun but highly derivative action thriller with lots of spy twists and turns.
The first potential blockbuster of the year is the work of British director Matthew Vaughn, known for his Kingsman trilogy and before that, movies like super-fine Brit-thriller Layer Cake, youthful superhero movie Kick-Ass and grown-up superhero movie X-men: First Class.
Working from a script by Jason Fuchs, Argylle tells the tale of Elly Conway (Bryce Dallas Howard), a successful writer of spy novels about a certain Agent Argylle. Unfortunately, just when she is about to write the final chapter of her new book, she is suddenly hit by a severe case of writer’s block.
You may ask yourself: is this temporary or has she simply run out of stories to tell?
But before you can come up with an answer, something strange happens and characters from her novels come to life right before her eyes. And before she knows it, Elly becomes part of her own spy universe. The central question that remains is: who is the real agent Argylle?
This is basically all you need to know, because Argylle is one of those movies where you probably have the most fun the less you know about it beforehand.
The cast is great, by the way, and apart from Bryce Dallas Howard, includes the likes of Sam Rockwell, Henry Cavill, John Cena, Bryan Cranston, Catherine O’Hara, Samuel L. Jackson, Sofia Boutella, Ariana DeBose and Dua Lipa. But for the same reason I mentioned earlier I’m not gonna talk about the characters, either.
The movie looks like 100 million bucks it actually cost 200 million!) and Vaughn keeps the movie on track, at least most of the time, with its lively mix of big action sequences, (un)predictable twists and turns, and comic interludes. Oh, and there is a cat too, as Elly always travels with her cat Alfie in a special cat pack. Alfie gets the chance to scratch someone’s eyes out, cause, you know, cats are wild animals. (Alfie’s owner in real life, by the way, is supermodel Claudia Schiffer).
As I said, it’s a fun ride, but I do have some nits to pick. The movie takes a while to get going and the final part of this 140 minute movie is way to drawn out.
The set-up of a writer with writer’s block is reminiscent of both last year’s The Lost City and there are also overtones of the earlier Romancing The Stone. Early on in Argylle there is a sequence on a train that feels like a replay of the Brad Pitt movie Bullet Train. I know there are lots of movies featuring action scenes on trains, but this one feels very similar.
Still, these are relatively minor problems.
There is also a reveal halfway through the movie that seems lifted from well-known action classic The Long Kiss Goodnight (1996), which also included Samuel L. Jackson in its cast. Now, I’m not saying there have never reveals like that in other movies or series, but this particular one (including a change in hair style) flies way to close to the sun to be considered a creative liberty.
So my conclusion is that for a movie that clearly wants to add something fresh to the 007-kind of spy genre, or at least subvert some of its most well-worn tropes, Argylle relies way too much on previous spy movies.
And there is something else as well: I probably love The Beatles more than you, but the fact that the recently released Now and Then is used not once, not twice but three times almost in full to emphasize certain story elements, that obviously have to do with the mixing of past and present, is a bit much.
Matthew Vaughn has indicated that he wants to blend Argylle and it’s sequel, the Kingsman movies and an as yet unnamed new spy franchise into a new cinematic universe.
That too feels like a bit (too) much.
Note: Argylle is released this week in most parts of the world, with South-Korea, China and Japan to follow in the coming weeks.