Written by: Jason Fuchs
Starring: Henry Cavill, Bryce Dallas Howard, Sam Rockwell, Bryan Cranston, Catherine O’Hara
Rating: [1.5/5]
Movies make decisions that make or break their success, whether it’s from a reveal, a big twist, or a specific character decision. These choices make such a difference, and the one made in Argylle reveals such an utter and complete misfire that almost deserves some admiration. Despite it having components that make for an entertaining time, this film’s complete lack of competence results in a miserable watch.
Famous spy novelist Elly (Bryce Dallas Howard) wraps up the latest book of her Argylle series, which follows the work of a handsome spy. When on route to visit her parents in England, she’s approached by a real spy named Aidan (Sam Rockwell), who saves her from a wave of assassins and reveals to her that a syndicate of bad guys want to capture her. She then learns that somehow everything she writes in her novels comes to fruition.
Admittedly, stepping into my viewing experience of Argylle, I had heard nothing but terrible things about it with nothing but harsh criticisms lambasting its quality. I certainly head into every film with an open mind, but with a film with this much star power, both in front and behind the camera, receiving the vitriol it did created a morbid curiosity for what it had in store for me. The first few scenes showed some promise as they displayed the cheesy spy world Elly creates and how she envisions it all as an actor. Then we have the start of the main plot and the danger Elly has before her, but then this narrative makes a decision to completely flip the script of this story, and it destroys the production.
This reveal sets the film down a course where it completely loses itself and takes it in a direction that only further highlights its deficiencies, revealing itself as an unserious film in all of the wrong ways. What started as something with an interesting premise explains itself away in ways that not only do not work but also fail spectacularly. You can see the vision and what the narrative sought to accomplish in utilizing Elly’s work in her spy novel and bringing it to her real life. The intention is loud and clear, but to not beat a dead horse any longer, the intention does not forgive the putrid execution.
While on a narrative level this film has its struggles, it certainly does not help that the action sequences on display look fairly pedestrian as well. When employing Matthew Vaughn to direct the feature, once again, you can see the vision behind this story. The director behind the Kingsman looked like a great choice to help visualize a story such as this one, and with an eye-watering budget fronted by Apple, it presented the opportunity for something special. However, Vaughn’s schtick, which I usually appreciate, fails in all of this CGI-filled nonsense that transpires throughout this film. For a production with this budget and starpower attached to it, all of the action sequences looked and felt so incredibly lazy to a truly baffling degree.
While his film fails spectacularly, at the very least I can give some appreciation to Bryce Dallas Howard for how she at least made some component of this film watchable. She does not typically get the opportunity to lead a film of this budget and scale and at the very least, she showed up to the party and put some work in. For all of the deficiencies on the writing and filmmaking front for Argylle, she tries her very best to sell every element of it, even if she could not save the movie from itself. She portrays Elly quite well in at least presenting her as a likeable protagonist through this crazy and shocking journey, but all in service of something well beneath what she brought to it.
While receiving adequate warnings from many individuals who had watched the film before, my curiosity in seeing this train wreck for myself resulted in them all being proved right. Argylle does not get much right, but at least when it fails, it does so in spectacular fashion. Its shortcomings left me in disbelief in how these clever reveals and twists thought they livened up the story, but it continued to dig itself a hole it could not climb out of. A baffling misfire that deserves a full inquiry on its failings and why Apple would sink so much money into this overly long and lackluster production.
Films with Josh 
