Directed By Matthew Vaughn

Starring – Bryce Dallas Howard, Sam Rockwell, Henry Cavill

The Plot – Elly Conway (Howard), an introverted spy novelist who seldom leaves her home, is drawn into the real world of espionage when the plots of her books get a little too close to the activities of a sinister underground syndicate. When Aiden (Rockwell), a spy, shows up to save her (he says) from being kidnapped or killed (or both), Elly and her beloved cat Alfie are plunged into a covert world where nothing, and no one, is what it seems.

Rated PG-13 for strong violence and action and some strong adult language.

Argylle | Official Trailer (youtube.com)

POSITIVES

Sometimes a movie’s fun factor is enough to candidly win over an audience, and with Vaughn piecing together perhaps his deepest and most decorated ensemble to date at his disposal, the performances more than hold their own with plenty of uniquely contrasting characters that constantly maintain that anything goes mentality that Vaughn has made a career out of. While the film’s endless one-off cameos are enough to mirror the sentiment of the script’s new twist behind every corner, the most meaningful work among them belongs to the dazzling trio of Howard, Rockwell and Bryan Cranston, who each command the screen with such charm and tangible influence towards a scene’s intergrity. For Howard, she emphatically embodies the dual personalities, author and rugged badass, that make up her character design, combining the reserved and terrified with the stoically resilient for an approach that allows us to see her in refreshingly new territory that feels unique from anything she’s previously attempted. Rockwell and Cranston play the house favorites, either in the ruggish charms of the former, whose impeccable comedic timing helped enhance the often diminishing returns with the movie’s humor, or the attention-stealing impact of the latter, whose softly spoken but stern deliveries influence the film’s most dangerous adversary. Aside from the performances, Vaughn still knows how to steer a camera with regards to his iconic side-scanning intense action set pieces. Vaughn once more combines the beauty in elaboracy, in elements of color and incredibly rapid paced fight choreography, with a slamming soundtrack of 70’s favorites that I greatly appreciated, all in conjuring sequences that are every bit infectious as they are overrun with urgency and vulnerability for the characters involved in them. While no single sequence rivals the kind of work that Vaughn did while changing the game forever in the original “Kingsman”, his confidence and capability towards conjuring the best camera placement for the scene to thrive is what gives him an edge over the competition of his peers, in turn eliciting the most fun for the movie whenever physical conflict takes over the reigns from storytelling development.

NEGATIVES

In terms of quality and even coherence, “Argylle” feels a million miles away from the man who crafted one of the most originally innovative action movies of the 21st century, in “Kingsman: Secret Service”, especially in the undercooked and underwhelming influence of ill-timed story beats that makes this such an arduous task to continuously stay invested towards. For starters, at 134 minutes, the film is simply too long, feeling like a director’s cut that has left in so much of the excess material that ideally should’ve been trimmed on the cutting room floor, especially with the kind of long-winded exposition dumps that grind the movie’s pacing to a screeching halt at the most compromising moments. This is a film that feels like it has as many as six different endings, with my interest diminishing the longer the movie persisted, especially in its dedication to twists, which I can’t remember ever experiencing so many in a single movie. While twists are typically effective in a movie if they’re cleverly designed or delivered in doses, the kind here stack like dirty dishes that each diminish the appeal and impact of the last one, with some even feeling evident as early as an hour before it materialized within the confines of the narrative. The biggest one has obviously been marketed as who is the real agent Argylle, and while I can say that my prediction didn’t accurately surface, I can say the one explored brutally convoluted this movie with an abundance of nonsensical plot holes and overriding exposition in ways that kept it from being salvagable, especially with how the movie’s focus and tonal impulses change so forcefully once that shoe has dropped into the deepest well. As to where the first two thirds of the movie are overtly serious, with an almost bizarre absence of humor from the proceedings, the third act completely overhauls into downright ridiculous territory, with characters ice skating through oil, or committing themselves to a dance number while killing as many of their adversaries as possible, and while humor has always played a part in Vaughn’s dazzling action set pieces, the kind here zap it of any aforementioned urgency or vulnerability, in turn evaporating stakes from the proceedings in ways that had me just waiting for the moment that the film would decide to call it a day. What’s most surprising isn’t any of the movie’s forty-eight twists, but rather the lack of edginess or appeal towards Vaughn’s PG-13 brand of humor here, with laughs only materializing as a result of the way Rockwell and his cohorts overtly commit themselves towards various punchlines, but rarely ever anything that felt clever or endearing in the depths of such throwaway dialogue of interaction between characters. It’s watered down in ways that lack expression, and as a result takes Vaughn entirely out of his zone of comfort, in order to, what I can only guess, is to sell more tickets to a wider range of audience demographic. In addition to this, “Argylle” serves as another big budgeted disaster ($200 million to be exact) that isn’t able to summon even a shred of believability in the C.G backdrops or artificial characters that it brings to the immediate attention of the audience. Whether in the incredibly lifeless designs of a four-legged feline that feels outdated for early 2000’s levels of computer graphics, or blandly rendered backdrops that brought back post-traumatic stress of last year’s “Expend4bles”, the lack of believability that comes with their constructs is only surpassed by the appalling reaction to such an incredible price tag, and while Vaughn’s tensely claustrophobic fight sequences easily stand as the highlight of the movie, the shallow scenic views of geographic imagery easily stood as its weakest, especially when magnified by seeing this on a silver screen where none of it can even be remotely obscured or underscored. Finally, while on the subject of jarring, I would be doing a grave disservice if I didn’t mention the abruptly clumsy transitions between worlds, fictional and reality, that continue throughout the film, even when the charm of the gimmick has rubbed off from continuous overindulgence. Early on in the film, Elly sees Rockwell’s Aiden as the novelization side of his character (Played by Cavill), and continues to do this long after they’ve made a truce with one another, all in order to I guess subscribe to the audience that they weren’t manipulated into thinking that Cavill, as well as John Cena, Dua Lipa or Ariana DeBose, had the kind of bigger parts that the movie’s trailers hinted towards. In my opinion, Cavill should’ve just been left to a one-off cameo, as each time the editing forcefully includes him in the actions of Aiden, it removes any fluidity or continuity to the proceedings, instead leaving audiences hanging in the balance of depiction, as we wait for the visuals to return to Aiden in current day, fighting off his many adversaries.

OVERALL
“Argylle” is the latest step in diminishing returns for Vaughn, who has embraced the same kind of movie since “Kingsman: Secret Service” struck oil with its rich balance of intensely gritty action and unapologetic humor. While enhanced by a remarkably deep ensemble and stylistically feverish action set pieces, the film’s tonal incoherence, convoluted explanations and twist-heavy impulses continuously alienate audience investment, leading to a nearly two-and-a-half-hour excursion that moves like pages turning in a book that you’re struggling to keep persisting through.

My Grade: 4/10 or D