Argylle, written by Matthew Vaughn and starring Bryce Dallas Howard and Sam Rockwell, is what one may call a stereotypical spy thriller film by definition. A damsel in distress, with no comprehension of what is happening around her, a mediocre-looking spy sent to protect her, and a heavily CGI’d Scottish Fold cat? With a widely star-studded cast, a captivating musical scale, and a 200 million dollar budget. This movie had the possibility of being an entertaining action for many thrill-seeking viewers to see, or it could be another confusing rather than captivating stunt film. The ladder is the only way to describe such a convoluted movie.
When watching any spy movie created by Matthew Vaughn, any viewer would suspect that plot twists could appear at any minute. However, the sheer amount of 180-degree turns in the movie could leave anybody with whiplash for more than a few days. The movie started normally enough. An unsuspecting woman entangled in a web of danger that she could have never expected and an establishment of what she would need to do to save herself. However, after the one-hour mark hits, the movie completely flips and becomes the most insane head-scratcher anybody would have pictured. After the first plot twist, the unsuspecting viewer is sucked into a whirlwind of unnecessary and unfeasible storylines, that not only add nothing to the plot but overall eliminate any charm from a somewhat original storyline. It leaves the viewer puzzled instead of astonished by the almost comically bad amount of developments made in the second half of the film. But this is not the only problem with the movie.
Argylle is also overly ridiculous in many sections of the film. To gain laughs and gasps out of viewers, the movie began to go over the top with CGI, green screens, and poorly thought-out scenes that contributed nothing to the story. On a positive note, the movie was quite engaging at points, but that was sadly overshadowed by the unnecessary amount of absurd moments and lengthy watchtime. The movie overall felt like an absolute waste of potential as the cast, direction, and some of the cinematography felt quite promising in the beginning. But the cluttered-together storylines as the movie progressed stopped me from enjoying what should have been an exciting and thrilling movie.
Though I would like to blame the movie’s poor quality only on the pure amount of unrealisticness, there seem to be many action dramas that follow the same key events, but the execution is simply better—for instance, Kingsman, which Matthew Vaughn also directs. Despite being directed by the same person, Kingsman gains the viewer’s attention in the first minute and continues to capture it throughout the rest of the movie. The viewer can also follow along with the film without things seeming redundant. Argylle tends to lack that ability and because of that, the movie faced the unfortunate of plummeting at the box office.
Ultimately, Argylle was sadly a perplexing mess of a movie with barely any redeeming qualities. If the needless storylines and immense amount of overdone scenes were taken out, perhaps Argylle could’ve been a thrilling new take on the spy action film genre. However, it is not. Instead, it left movie theaters empty, and viewers disappointed. Though the movie did horribly at the box office, one thing the creators of Argylle can be proud of is getting $25 out of my family.
