This past week Northwestern students have finally been able to see Matthew Vaughn’s new film “Argylle.” After seeing a few trailers movie goers have been pretty excited, especially because of Vaughn’s other successful works like “Kingsman” and “Kick-Ass.” However, after watching the movie it was a pretty big let-down. From a plot that doesn’t make sense to a reliance on twists for the sake of having twists, the movie feels undercooked.
The movie opens with a fun, albeit cheesy, spy scene with Henry Cavill as the titular Argylle, but this is all the spy stuff audiences get for a while. Instead the film cuts to Bryce Dallas Howard’s character, Elly Conway, who is the real protagonist of this movie. Argylle is a fictional spy that she has written books about. The film follows Elly as she is thrown into the world of espionage. It seems like what she is writing about is happening in the real world. As a result of this she is launched headfirst into an adventure to find out who the real agent Argylle is. It would be nice to say that the adventure that follows this is entertaining, but it is really not. The movie is full of sporatic editing and baffling decisions. Although Cavill is front and center on the poster, his appearances are limited to the opening scene and Elly’s hallucinations of him speaking to her. As a result, the movie often feels weird when the action stops to show Elly talk to her delusions. Cavill’s use in this movie was marketed alike the movie “Austin Powers 3.” “Austin Powers 3” decided to make it seem like the entire movie was about Tom Cruise playing Austin Powers even though he’s only there for a few minutes.
The secondary character of “Argylle” is Aiden, played by Sam Rockwell. Aiden is the one who ends up dragging Elly into this mess and does not really end up doing much except dump exposition the entire movie. He is only there to explain and expound upon every single plot point of the movie. Similarly, Samuel L. Jackson is in this movie for approximately two minutes just to reveal who the “real agent Argylle” was, which was a very obvious twist.
After a couple more boring action set pieces that constantly cut between Aiden and Elly’s hallucination of Argylle, the movie finally reaches the climax of the movie, and it is another pointless twist that does not really change the movie that much. When the film reaches the final action set piece, it felt like Vaughn wanted to recreate what he had done in Kingsman, but it does not click in this movie. The final fight is boring and feels like it is trying to be too many things at once.
The biggest gripe with the movie comes in its post credit scene. For some reason Vaughn feels the need to push Argylle into a cinematic universe and set up sequel after sequel. Not every movie needs to be part of a larger story, it is okay for a movie to exist on its own. Even with all these negatives, the movie is still worth a watch. While does not have the greatest plot it has some fun ideas that are executed pretty well. There is no shortage of funny moments throughout the film. Unfortunately, it failed to find its footing and instead struggled the entire runtime trying to find out what kind of movie it should be.
