A Great Achievement in Stupid Movies - Argylle, Reviewed

Years ago, I was with someone when they watched their first Bond movie. It was in the living room at our old place, and we were watching Goldeneye, I believe because a new Bond with Pierce Brosnan was on the way and our guest confessed that they had never, ever actually watched one. 

So we tear into the cold open with its derring-do, wisecracking action, laser watches, et cetera, but when Bond chases a runaway aircraft off the edge of a cliff, skydives into it, and wrestles control away from the Russian pilot, soaring away to the strains of Tina Turner's theme song, they rolled their eyes and snickered, "oh, brother."

I paused the film and said, "Look, everyone has their own threshold for this kind of stuff, but if that stunt tears you out of your suspension of disbelief or whatever, we may as well stop it here and put in something else, because, in the words of B.T.O., 'you ain't seen nothin' yet'."

They apologized (which I explained was unnecessary), we resumed the film, and although it was not entirely their cup of tea, they enjoyed the remainder and said they could definitely see the appeal. They just had no idea what they were getting themselves into, and the recalibration seemed to have helped.

Watching Matthew Vaughn's Argylle today in a theater empty but for the two of us, I turned to Audrey at one point and said, "I didn't expect this flick to be too serious, but it has slid way past silly and is wading speedily into stupid territory."

She gave me that look that I know means, "...and?"

"And I am here for it," I replied.

You probably don't need me to tell you the premise of Argylle is ludicrous, even by the standards of a big-budget, international spy film. Anxious, cat-loving Elly Conway (Bryce Dallas Howard), author of a series of highly successful espionage novels starring her creation Agent Argylle (dramatized by Henry Cavill), has her life turned upside down when a real-life secret agent (Sam Rockwell) tells Elly that her fiction has overlapped with real-life operations in such a way that a rogue agency is now trying to capture her to get a jump on what will happen next.

I mean, right away you should know we are further away from the John Le Carré milieu here and way closer to Austin Powers, right? But because this is Matthew Vaughn (Kick-Ass, Kingsmen), the action scenes are both brutal and beautiful, lethal and funny, particularly when Elly's rescuer Aidan asks her to crush the skulls of the adversaries he intends to lay out on the path of their escape.

"What? I-I can't do that!" Elly protests.

"No, no, it's easy," Aidan assures her, "the human skull is shockingly brittle."

Anyhow, despite or possibly because of its silliness, Audrey and I had a good time at Argylle. It is uneven in places, particularly where it feels like Vaughn is trying to bring in some dark humor from Kingsmen but having trouble squeezing into the confining PG-13 box the movie required. In fact, he mentioned in an interview that he didn't find it difficult so much as puzzling - head shots are R-rated but chest shots are PG-13?

Bryce Dallas Howard does a great job portraying a nervous person adapting to terrifying circumstances, but Sam Rockwell is a delight, as always; making you laugh and feel relieved but then adding enough ambivalence to make you wonder if trusting him is the right thing to do.

The book scenes with Henry Cavill are intentionally outlandish with a few too many CG-driven stunts (not my fave) and oodles of style, and let me tell you, for a gorgeous pop star, Dua Lipa looks tremendously comfortable firing a submachine gun from the back of a motorcycle.

For what it's worth, I believe the plot has enough internal consistency to get you over the finish line without too many "oh, brothers", but make no mistake, this is a story where, in the end, they are kind of relying on dumb to get the job done. 

In fact, I will tell you what: I hate when people tell movie-goers to turn their brains off and just enjoy themselves, but you are far more likely to enjoy yourself at this movie if you a) don't bring any cynics along with you and, b) periodically ask yourself, as I did, if perhaps this was originally intended to be an animated feature.

If you enjoyed the Kingsmen movies at all (particularly the second one), you can likely have a good time at Argylle. This goes double if you are smart enough to recognize when stupid works, but not everyone does, which I wonder is perhaps why it is struggling in the theaters.