'Argylle' review: Stylish spy story pointlessly spins in circles
A spy tale with plenty of twists and turns but no sense of stakes or intrigue, "Argylle" is a convoluted mess of a story in search of a purpose beyond its own self-inflated sense of style.
Director Matthew Vaughn, who made the sporty "Kingsman: The Secret Service" and followed it with two dud sequels, is flailing in this story of a spy novelist whose works hold the key to real world events, which make her the target of a devious terrorist organization. What's real and what's not is a big question in this universe, but getting viewers to meaningfully invest in a story that spins them around like a tornado just for the sport of it all is a difficult hurdle to clear.
Bryce Dallas Howard is Elly Conway, a novelist who is wrapping the latest entry in her "Argylle" series, about a suave spy cut from the James Bond cloth. (In the world of the novels, Argylle is played by Henry Cavill, who sports a spiked-up Howie Long-like 'do.) Fans wonder how she gets the details of her books so exact, Elly swears it comes from copious research and nothing else.
On a train one day on the way to meet up with her mother Ruth (Catherine O'Hara), Elly is stopped by Aidan (Sam Rockwell), a bearded man who instructs her to follow him. Soon they're chased by a series of gun-toting bad guys, and she's caught up in the same kind of espionage she's used to only writing about.
It turns out her books mirror real life spy plots just a little too closely, which makes her a target of some bad apples. Of course there's more to Elly than meets the eye, and to Aidan, and to everyone else we meet in this spy novel come to life, including head baddie Ritter (Bryan Cranston), and Alfred Solomon (Samuel L. Jackson), an asset tucked away in the French countryside.
The only being in this world taken at face value is Alfie, Elly's Scottish Fold cat, whom she carries around in a backpack outfitted with a portal hole, which the movie treats as the greatest, most novel sight gag that has ever been sight gagged. Why it's a cat, in a backpack! You see that? And if you don't appreciate the bit on the first, second, third, fourth or fifth time it comes around, there are a dozen other opportunities to marvel at the sight of a cat in a backpack. A cat in a backpack, wow, what a crazy world we live in!
"Argylle" is full of conceits it wants you to think are crazy but really aren't all that special. (Stick around for the "ice skating" sequence, or better yet, don't.) A good number of "Argylle's" visual gags — even some, or rather especially some, involving the cat — are undone by its extremely shoddy CGI work, which immediately lifts viewers out of the action. It's impossible to invest in the reality of something that is presented like a bad video game, and in a time where VFX work in movies seems to be getting worse, not better, "Argylle" is a particularly egregious offender.
This is also a movie that uses the Beatles' recently unearthed track "Now and Then" as a key plot point, with one character explaining to another how it "used to be" their song. When, all the way back in November 2023? Or do these characters exist in a world where that song has always existed?
Details like these wouldn't be as big a deal if "Argylle's" script, written by Jason Fuchs (2015's "Pan"), had more meat on its bones. But it's a story that exists mainly to subvert spy clichés, the kind Vaughn has played with so freely in his movies, which only ends up reinforcing them. By the time "Argylle" is done spinning viewers in circles, it's hard to feel anything but manipulated.
It's all squeezed into a PG-13 package like a pair of ill-fitting pants. Vaughn, a director who has never lacked for style (see his 2004 debut "Layer Cake," or his comically violent action movie send-up "Kick-Ass"), has nothing going on here but style, and the seams are showing. Consider "Argylle" a fashion faux pas.
'Argylle'
GRADE: D
Rated PG-13: for strong violence and action and some strong language
Running time: 139 minutes
In theaters
agraham@detroitnews.com