Argylle (2024)

[Eric Duncan]

Discuss

[filmlover]

What the hell happened to Matthew Vaughn? He used to be a dependable name when it came to making highly entertaining and highly stylish movies. Now he just coasts on the Kingsman franchise (how much of the reported $200M budget went to paying 20th Century/Disney for the logo at the end?) that he's clearly more invested in than anyone else is, which explains why this often comes off as "what if Kingsman, but mixed with Romancing the Stone (or to use a more recent comparison, The Lost City)?" The comedy falls completely flat, the twists get more ridiculous as it goes along, and even the many action sequences fail to generate excitement (the third act in particular ends up particularly eye-rolling due to how ridiculous it all is - ice-skating on oil?!?). It all ends up a limp and inexplicably long 139 minutes that comes across as if this designed by an AI machine to be watched purely as background noise. This has to be the biggest waste of so much talent since David O. Russell's Amsterdam.

 

Also, have to assume that most of that absurd budget was spent on salaries because this has some of the worst visual effects work I've seen in quite some time. Good job reinforcing the notion that these titles originally meant for streaming often come off as both fake movies and money laundering schemes, Apple and Vaughn.

 

Then there's that insanely overqualified cast that is sure to let folks down given how a number of them basically amount to cameos (Dua Lipa, John Cena, Ariana DeBose, Sofia Boutella, and Richard E. Grant are all barely in the movie). As the lead, Bryce Dallas Howard does okay with her thin character until the big twist is revealed that (dun dun duuunnn!) she's the real Agent Argylle (Rachel Kyle = R. Kyle get it?! Har har sigh). Sam Rockwell collects a paycheck, Bryan Cranston and Catherine O'Hara chew on the scenery as the poorly-developed baddies, and I'm going to assume SLJ only participated as a favor to Vaughn. Then there's the convoluted and baffling use of top-billed Henry Cavill. He's a fictional character within the movie who only appears when Howard wants to see him (mostly during action scenes in place of Rockwell), and he ends up saddled with not one but two terrible haircuts. When your best performance in such a star-studded ensemble happens to be a (good portion of the time, CGI) cat, there's a problem.

 

It's a lousy attempt at a franchise-starter (complete with a mid-credits tease for a sequel we'll never see) that proves that the lame movies typical of Q1 of any given year are still a thing even in a supposedly more "awake" Hollywood era. When it comes out on streaming, feel free to swipe right past it to better options.

 

C-

[PlatnumRoyce]

Basically agree with @filmlover (with the exception of liking the dumb Argylle/R-Kyle pun). This movie's core takeaway to me was just that it's genuinely hard for Vaughn to make a film that captures the magic of the original Kingsman. C- because I can't really talk myself lower. 

 

Quote

Cavill haircut

 

It's so distractingly bad it makes me wonder if there's some insane stipulation in his Superman contract about coming anywhere close to mimicking his Superman face/hair in a competitor's movies. That's obviously not it but the choice is baffling.