Matthew Vaughn’s latest, Argyle, sure did look promising whenever that trailer came out. Vaughn has a proven track record with gonzo crazy action and espionage stories. But there was one concern: a February release date. Good movies rarely come out in February. Vaughn’s Kingsman series shows that something like Argyle should be right up his alley, and the all-star cast combined with the director’s track record should work. But why was it coming out in February?
And for that matter, why did the studio only produce one trailer? That’s odd. The Rotten Tomatoes score wasn’t that encouraging either. But man, did that one trailer look good.
Superspy Agent Argyle (Henry Cavil) is on the trailer of a master spy, and his latest adventure suggests his boss (Richard E Grant) is one of the bad guys. With only his loyal sidekick Wyatt (John Cena) at his side, he’ll need to bring down the bad guys who have been manipulating him for who-knows-how-long. Oh, and he’s also the fictional creation of anxiety-ridden author Elly Conway (Bryce Dallas Howard). Elly lives alone save for her cat Alfie, and she is having a bit of writer’s block when it comes to the last chapter of her next book. Feeling the need to get out, Elly decides to take a train to visit her mother (Catherine O’Hara). But then along comes this scruffy-looking guy named Aidan Wilde (Sam Rockwell), and he has quite the story to tell: Elly’s books are a little too close to reality, that there really is an evil spy organization running around, and Elly’s Argyle stories are a little too accurate.
From there, Elly (and Alfie) are on the run with only Aidan for protection as various spies keep sending minions her way. But why? What do they really want with Elly? And why does she keep seeing the fictional Argyle everywhere. And normally, I would say more about the plot in this paragraph, but there’s far too many plot twists, and that’s why I suspect that there was only one trailer.
So, that sure does sound promising on the surface. Argyle is a well-cast movie that really should be something Vaughn excels at. And yet, he doesn’t. As the movie starts, it seems promising enough, but the longer it goes, the less I liked it. Some of the CGI looks more uncanny valley than anything else, and while I would expect a spy story to have some plot twists, Argyle arguably has too many to the point where they get less effective as the movie goes along. And that’s not counting the ones I saw coming.
The problem, ultimately, is one of tone and pace. Howard and Rockwell are fine in their respective roles, and Cavil may be playing the closest he ever will to James Bond, even if it may be more a Roger Moore-era Bond. But there are some really bad needle-drop musical moments and a pair of action sequences where, I suspect, Vaughn was trying to pull off something like the church fight scene from the first Kingsman movie, but neither of them really work, and they may be some of the most ridiculous action scenes I have seen in a long time, and not the good kind of ridiculous. I really wanted to like Argyle, but honestly, I really didn’t.
Grade: D
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