Argylle
Year: 2024
Directed by: Matthew Vaughn
Starring: Henry Cavill, Bryan Cranston, Bryce Dallas Howard, Samuel L. Jackson, Catherine O'Hara & Sam Rockwell
Runtime: 139 mins
BBFC: 12
Published: 22/02/24
Directed by: Matthew Vaughn
Starring: Henry Cavill, Bryan Cranston, Bryce Dallas Howard, Samuel L. Jackson, Catherine O'Hara & Sam Rockwell
Runtime: 139 mins
BBFC: 12
Published: 22/02/24
After all the fanfare surrounding Argylle’s release thanks to the extensive marketing campaign that was basically everywhere you looked, the film appears to have been 2024’s first big flop. It seemed as though the film should have been great, with Matthew Vaughn of Kick-Ass and Kingsman fame directing, as well as starring plenty of big-name stars. So where did it all fall apart? It’s actually quite tough to say, because Argylle disappoints in almost every area from the word go.
When spy thriller author Elly Conway (Bryce Dallas Howard) finds herself the target of a terrorist spy network, the Division, she is rescued by Aidan (Sam Rockwell), an agent that defected from the Division many years ago. It is revealed to Elly that her bestselling novels about a fictional Agent Argylle (Henry Cavill) are actually true events, and the Division wants to pick her brains about what happens next so that they may use it to their advantage. Believing Elly holds the secret weapon to the Division’s downfall, she and Aidan travel the world as she pieces together the plot of her next novel.
I think following the breakout success of Vaughn with Layer Cake in the early 00’s, and the genuinely excellent Kick-Ass in 2010, X-Men: First Class in 2011, and Kingsman: The Secret Service in 2014, he’s been given a lot of concessions when it came to the Kingsman sequels, The Golden Circle in 2017 and The King’s Man in 2021. Argylle seems to have been the straw that broke the camels back, proving that Vaughn has nothing new left to offer following his stellar debut streak.
The story is a mess of double and triple crossings that all feel ripped straight out of the most cliché spy thriller spoof you could possibly think of. Everyone’s playing each other and not in a clever way, you’re thrown so many red herrings and misdirection’s that by the time the story does work out what way it’s heading you’re either completely lost or you’ve stopped caring. It’s a shame because it could have been a promising given its intriguing concept, but I think it all falls apart because of Vaughn’s inability to decide how seriously the film is taking itself. Using the example of Rockwell’s Aidan as an example, the first time we meet him is a fight on a train where everything to him is a huge joke. He’s laughing his ass off whilst he’s gunning down an absurd number of assailants. But the moment the action is over he’s all serious and getting annoyed with Elly that she’s not better equipped to handle the situation. Even within the same scenes such as the finale on the oil tanker, Aidan is all smiles and jokes until the script randomly decides that he needs to be a strait-laced hard ass. He’s far from the only character that does it either, and I got whiplash from all the back and forth that characters have about how seriously to take the situation they’re in.
When spy thriller author Elly Conway (Bryce Dallas Howard) finds herself the target of a terrorist spy network, the Division, she is rescued by Aidan (Sam Rockwell), an agent that defected from the Division many years ago. It is revealed to Elly that her bestselling novels about a fictional Agent Argylle (Henry Cavill) are actually true events, and the Division wants to pick her brains about what happens next so that they may use it to their advantage. Believing Elly holds the secret weapon to the Division’s downfall, she and Aidan travel the world as she pieces together the plot of her next novel.
I think following the breakout success of Vaughn with Layer Cake in the early 00’s, and the genuinely excellent Kick-Ass in 2010, X-Men: First Class in 2011, and Kingsman: The Secret Service in 2014, he’s been given a lot of concessions when it came to the Kingsman sequels, The Golden Circle in 2017 and The King’s Man in 2021. Argylle seems to have been the straw that broke the camels back, proving that Vaughn has nothing new left to offer following his stellar debut streak.
The story is a mess of double and triple crossings that all feel ripped straight out of the most cliché spy thriller spoof you could possibly think of. Everyone’s playing each other and not in a clever way, you’re thrown so many red herrings and misdirection’s that by the time the story does work out what way it’s heading you’re either completely lost or you’ve stopped caring. It’s a shame because it could have been a promising given its intriguing concept, but I think it all falls apart because of Vaughn’s inability to decide how seriously the film is taking itself. Using the example of Rockwell’s Aidan as an example, the first time we meet him is a fight on a train where everything to him is a huge joke. He’s laughing his ass off whilst he’s gunning down an absurd number of assailants. But the moment the action is over he’s all serious and getting annoyed with Elly that she’s not better equipped to handle the situation. Even within the same scenes such as the finale on the oil tanker, Aidan is all smiles and jokes until the script randomly decides that he needs to be a strait-laced hard ass. He’s far from the only character that does it either, and I got whiplash from all the back and forth that characters have about how seriously to take the situation they’re in.
The film’s a real let down visually too. The bright and colourful aesthetic really had me hooked from the trailers, but the entire film looks like it was shot on a green screen. None of the environments look real, even when I know that they are actually on location. One scene is shot outside the Royal Albert Hall in London, an area I frequent reasonably often, and yet it looked incredibly fake. I know it wasn’t because I know that those scenes were actually shot there. But why does it look so fake? Clearly is the type of cameras used, the focus setup, the type of lens, the lighting, or a combination of all of these things. But it looks fake, and not a single environment in this film looked like it was shot on a real set.
To add insult to injury the stuff that is very clearly CGI looks awful, pulled straight from a late-00’s videogame. The effects are all rubbery and low detail, and the problem is that they’re used so often that you can’t actually escape them for very long. During the opening sequence I had hoped that those effects might have been made to look as fake as they were because it’s a fantasy ripped from the pages of Elly’s story, but it didn’t take long for me to find out that no, all the digital effects look that bad. Perhaps the most heinous example is Elly’s cat, Alfie. The cat which plays such a huge part of the film and marketing is almost never a real cat, and it’s painfully obvious because the digital version of it barely resembles a cat most of the time.
I’ve also clearly grown tired of a Matthew Vaugh action sequence; by which I mean an ultra-violent shootout set to an upbeat pop song. Whilst Argylle certainly tones down the graphic content of the violence compared to Kick-Ass and Kingsman, it’s exactly the same kind of fight choreography, shot setup, editing style, and when mixed to a pop song it certainly fits very nicely. But once you’ve seen this exact thing for well over a decade now it’s just tiring.
I think Argylle made me realise that I just don’t care about Matthew Vaughn films anymore. I’m sure it’ll still work for some people, but Argylle just recycles concepts seen before in so many of Vaughn’s films. Wrapped up in a convoluted story with an inconsistent tone, plus some of the worst digital special effects I have seen in a major studio blockbuster in quite some time I really couldn’t have cared less. I know that Vaughn was banking on this being a franchise starter for him so that he could move away from Kingsman, but considering the poor box office performance of the film alongside the underwhelming critical reception, I’m sure Argylle will be a one-shot swing and miss that will be swiftly forgotten about before the year is out.
To add insult to injury the stuff that is very clearly CGI looks awful, pulled straight from a late-00’s videogame. The effects are all rubbery and low detail, and the problem is that they’re used so often that you can’t actually escape them for very long. During the opening sequence I had hoped that those effects might have been made to look as fake as they were because it’s a fantasy ripped from the pages of Elly’s story, but it didn’t take long for me to find out that no, all the digital effects look that bad. Perhaps the most heinous example is Elly’s cat, Alfie. The cat which plays such a huge part of the film and marketing is almost never a real cat, and it’s painfully obvious because the digital version of it barely resembles a cat most of the time.
I’ve also clearly grown tired of a Matthew Vaugh action sequence; by which I mean an ultra-violent shootout set to an upbeat pop song. Whilst Argylle certainly tones down the graphic content of the violence compared to Kick-Ass and Kingsman, it’s exactly the same kind of fight choreography, shot setup, editing style, and when mixed to a pop song it certainly fits very nicely. But once you’ve seen this exact thing for well over a decade now it’s just tiring.
I think Argylle made me realise that I just don’t care about Matthew Vaughn films anymore. I’m sure it’ll still work for some people, but Argylle just recycles concepts seen before in so many of Vaughn’s films. Wrapped up in a convoluted story with an inconsistent tone, plus some of the worst digital special effects I have seen in a major studio blockbuster in quite some time I really couldn’t have cared less. I know that Vaughn was banking on this being a franchise starter for him so that he could move away from Kingsman, but considering the poor box office performance of the film alongside the underwhelming critical reception, I’m sure Argylle will be a one-shot swing and miss that will be swiftly forgotten about before the year is out.