'Argylle' Review: Stumbling Spy Thriller Misses The Mark
What has happened to the particular art of the blockbuster?
What is meant to be a celebration of the cinematic mass, audiences pouring in to see an all-encompassing event at the theater perfectly manufactured to draw “oohs” and “ahhs” from the crowd (think Pirates of the Caribbean, Avatar, Top Gun: Maverick). Now, at least with Argylle, that brand of blockbuster is dead. Which is a shame, considering Matthew Vaughn’s multiple past contributions to said form, with his Kingsman and Kick-Ass efforts that captivated moviegoers hungry for action and wit in waves.
Argylle plays like a parody of those films; beyond the needle-drops and hallway bullet ballets, any semblance of the spirit or soul from Vaughn’s past projects is completely gone. Standing on the bones of those blockbuster hits of old is a new form for Vaughn, one traced in gray and dressed in bland white light, unaware of the craft that made its own mediocrity possible in the first place.
It’s this senseless form of progress that sets the tone for the experience from the beginning; an unfortunate, neglective pace that does exactly the opposite as it was intended. Argylle is a downright disaster in every conceivable direction, one that may very well spell doom for future films of this same ilk. In that case, there may actually be a diamond in this rough.
If there is anything positive to be said about this one, it is the cast, quite predictably. Henry Cavill overcomes a vile haircut (a true act of image violence) to deliver a fun, suave spy performance, despite his role being much smaller than the pre-release marketing made it out to be. Bryce Dallas Howard is a compelling lead, and Sam Rockwell doing his best Owen Wilson impression isn’t as bad as it sounds; add in Bryan Cranston in Breaking Bad form and Sam Jackson playing pretty much the exact same character he did in Vaughn’s Kingsman movies, and you’ve got enough on that front to make this thing bearable.
Even John Cena and Dua Lipa, who are each on screen for less than five minutes total, make a somewhat significant impact. The fault is not to be cast on any member of this cast, but it is due to a fault (or many faults) in just about every other category. The greatest offender of them all may be Vaughn’s visuals; the sheer lack of variety or depth at any point on screen makes this thing feel like a talk show.
Harsh, unmoving lights burn the face of the subject on screen, regardless of time, place, or tone; inside or out, day or night, the light is white, bland, and almost always unchanging. This, taken in tandem with most scenes’ (aside from Vaughn loosening up on occasion with some trademark fight choreography) tendency to alternate between three shots of the most basic conversational coverage imaginable makes Argylle listless on the aesthetic front.
Even when things pick up on the page, and Vaughn is set up with relatively interesting set pieces (a few make no sense at all, but the rest of the film is such a drag that you’re ready to put that aside) he manages to dull their edge to the point of pointlessness. Why even go to the length to employ unique elements in action sequences if they end up looking the exact same as the rest of the film? The final fight scene, absurdist in concept yet hapless in execution, is shot in the exact same manner as the string of somber conversations before it. What gives?
Nothing. It isn’t just Vaughn’s surprisingly bland direction, though. Aside from those few aforementioned interesting setups, this screenplay is equally as drab. There is a fair bit more happening on the page than on the screen at all times, with more than a couple of twists being jammed into the mix and executed with a quick carelessness that renders them essentially useless, save for one small switch-up about halfway through that genuinely works quite well. In that way, there are slashes of intrigue here, but they’re so few and far between that you’d be hard pressed to remember them at all by the time the credits roll.
The screenplay and Vaughn’s direction both make an attempt to lend themselves to spy thrillers of old, though only about halfway. This is a have your cake and eat it too type situation, where Vaughn and company want to make a classic spy movie of sorts without really making one at all; take the action and the occasional surface-level cliche and leave the rest of what makes a lot of those classics, classics in the first place.
This contingent middle-ground ends up failing both sides, and, in the end, Argylle feels like a knockoff of both camps, if anything. If you want a solid modern spy thriller with its tongue planted firmly in cheek, check out Guy Ritchie’s massively underrated The Man From Uncle. If Argylle awoke in you a desire that leads you to Ritchie’s spy romp, consider that a win, even if it meant losing 139 minutes of your life at the theater, subject to what may very well remain the year’s biggest cinematic miss.
In reference to that runtime, too, the pace is all over the place. In consistent fashion, Argylle struggles to do just about anything right; it may not commit many offensive wrongs, but in the end, missing the mark on everything means just that, regardless of how bad you specifically miss it. That is Argylle.
This would be a tough recommendation for any crowd.
Argylle desperately wants to be a crowd pleaser, yet another Kingsman prototype for Vaughn, convincing the masses of his brand of kinetic action and whiplash-style storytelling, yet falls far behind all his previous work in all manners of deliverance, struggling to succeed on any of the same levels as the best of his work. There isn’t any solid ground for this one to stand on, and you’ll likely be better off waiting for Vaughn’s next Kingsman entry, if anything at all. Either way though, avoid this one at all costs.