An underwhelming D-level effort from mostly A- and B-level talent, director-producer Matthew Vaughn’s (The Kingsman: The Secret Service. X-Men: Days of Future Past, Layer Cake) latest attempt at a franchise starter, Argylle, perplexes, irritates, and disappoints in almost equal measure.
Nothing, not even a cast filled with trained thespians, not the dialogue credited to Wonder Woman writer Jason Fuchs, nor the supposed best visual effects a reported $200M budget can buy in today’s market, can save Argylle from floundering repeatedly, eventually drowning in abject mediocrity. And that’s being kind to the puzzlingly awful results onscreen, results painfully stretched out over Argylle’s excruciatingly bloated running time (2 hours, 20 minutes).
It all starts semi-promisingly enough, with the title character (Henry Cavill), a Bond-inspired super-spy in man-on-a-mission mode. Argylle trails his LeGrange (Dua Lipa), a woman of dubious motives and intentions, into a dance club somewhere near Greece’s jagged, curving, over-bright coastline.
With broad-shouldered techie/man in a chair/van, Wyatt (John Cena), on hand to help, Argylle’s mission success seems assured. Of course, it’s not that easy as tables are overturned, motorbikes revved, and an enervating city-wide chase ensures, leaving massive amounts of property destruction — not to mention a relatively high, if PG-13-rated, body count — in their wake.
Nothing we’ve seen so far, however, counts as “real” within the boundaries of the film itself. It’s meant to be a chapter in writer Elly Conway’s (Bryce Dallas Howard) latest spy novel in a long-running, successful series. It’s meta-fiction basically, but never half as clever as Vaughn and Fuchs imagine, especially as the first major plot turn turns Elly’s unadventurous lifestyle upside down.
Elly’s novels, a moneymaker for her and a lark or diversion to her readers, are something else altogether to actual spies, specifically a rogue, super-secret org led by an avuncular bureaucrat, Ritter (Bryan Cranston). Ritter has become obsessed with discovering not just how Elly seems to know so much about his organization, but how Elly’s stories continue to reflect current events and possibly predict the future.
Elly’s first encounter with Ritter’s unsanctioned assassins occurs on a Colorado train. Luckily for Elly, another super-spy, Aidan (Oscar winner Sam Rockwell), steps in to save her, using every surface and object at his disposal to incapacitate Ritter’s team.
Understandably confused, Elly doesn’t know who to trust, but with her choices limited by time and circumstance, she agrees to tentatively trust Aidan and join him on his quest for a so-called “Master File” containing the names, identities, and backgrounds of Ritter’s agents in the field. Also, she brings her adorable cat, Alfie, in a backpack specifically designed for feline safety and security.
Elly and Aidan’s quest leads them to the globe-trotting typically associated with spy-thrillers and spy-comedies, starting in London, moving to the Arabian Peninsula, and then parts unknown, all while the easily freaked-out Elly interweaves Aidan’s heroics with visualizations of her fictional super-spy. What starts out as slightly intriguing, mixing Elly’s subjective point-of-view with the film’s presumed objective point-of-view quickly devolves into self-congratulatory wankery.
Likewise, Elly repeatedly loses consciousness for a variety of story-related reasons. Vaughan switches between fading to black and “eye blinks” to denote Elly falling asleep or waking up. Passably ingenious and somewhat humourous the first time Vaughn employs the gimmick, it rapidly becomes tiresome by the fifth or sixth time.
With seemingly endless more plot turns still to come, each one less clever than the last — and the last foreshadowed earlier and confirmed later — Argylle can’t retain what little narrative momentum the first act established. Instead, it continues to devolve into painfully predictable set-ups, painfully predictable resolutions, and painfully predictable repetition until it hits the two-hour mark and Argylle arrives at its expectedly explosive conclusion, minus the modicum of wit, humor, or invention that once made a mainstream filmmaker like Vaughn worth a night out at the local multiplex or a stream at home.
Argylle opens Friday, February 2, only in movie theaters. Visit the official site for more information.