British director Mathew Vaughn’s newest film, Agylle, doesn’t reach the heights of his previous works but still provides a fun time. Photo: Universal.
As a person who watches movies constantly, I tell everyone I’d rather watch a funny and bad film than something boring.
Films that try to be serious and fail aren’t my thing, but I absolutely love movies that lean into their cheesiness, like Fast and Furious, despite knowing they’re not great.
British director Mathew Vaughn’s newest film, Argylle, falls into that cheesy but fun category.
The new spy film follows author Elly (Bryce Dallas Howard) whose spy novels correctly predict real-life events. Due to the details of her novels mirroring the real world, syndicates from across the globe start targeting Elly so real-life spy Aiden (Sam Rockwell) is sent to save her.
Straight out of the gate, Bryce Dallas Howard and Sam Rockwell are the best part of the film. Their chemistry is fantastic and they clearly understand the tone of the film better than most, if not all of their co-stars.
Unfortunately, from the trailers and posters, they are not depicted as the main characters. Henry Cavill is.
Henry Cavill plays the fictional character Argylle, the main character from Elly’s novels. He has about 10 minutes of screen time throughout the entire movie and is only shown in dream-like scenarios. Despite what the trailers want you to believe, he has no real impact on the film.
For me, this was a poor move from Universal Studios. They knew Cavill was their biggest draw and used him as a marketing stunt.
Aside from the casting, the film’s action can also be hit-and-miss. This is slightly disappointing when you look at some of Mathew Vaughn’s previous works. All three of the Kingsman movies have great action sequences and despite being the black sheep of the franchise, X-Men: First Class‘s stunt work is also great.
That’s not to say it’s all bad, although the range from the best to the worst scenes is quite clear. The best is better than 95 per cent of the movies coming out today, but the worst is lazy and riddled with bad CGI.
The action is very stylistic, as is most of Vaughn’s work, but I was blinded by bad lighting and bright colours in a couple of scenes. It’s hard to explain in words, but you will understand exactly what I mean once you see it on screen.
The plot is another problem.
I don’t know how the film does it, but so much of it is predictable while the rest is absolutely mind-blowing. For two of the two-and-a-half hours of this film (139 minutes to be precise), I knew exactly where it was going, yet a particular reveal that wasn’t too relevant to the plot blew my mind.
Argylle is a fun film. Not great, not bad. Just fun. It does its job of filling the movie release dead zone in February as we wait for the big blockbusters to release in Autumn.
I enjoyed most of the action and a particular twist had me super excited as a fan of Vaughn’s previous work. While I don’t think paying full price to watch this on the big screen is necessary, I can see this movie having a good run on streaming when it arrives on Apple TV in a couple of months.
Argylle is showing in cinemas everywhere.
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