Argylle: 6.8/10
Argylle is certainly a fun movie, assuming you aren’t taking it too seriously. The actors are great, as to be expected when looking at the cast sheet. Bryce Dallas Howard is perfectly cast as Elly, the innocent, career driven author who turns out to also be an ass-kicking spy (which she surprisingly holds her own as). Bryan Cranston does as great a job as you would expect, switching between Elly’s loving father and evil villain in only the way one would expect Cranston be able to pull off. And of course Catherine O’Hara is the perfect motherly figure for Elly, and can surprisingly do a relatively tolerable (at least to my American ears) British accent. All the other A-list actors play well in their roles, with singer Dua Lipa even holding her own in the cheesy scenes played out from Elly’s novel.
The action scenes require one to suspend their sense of reality, with completely over the top fighting sequences where Aiden, played by Sam Rockwell, often takes on fifteen to twenty men comfortably. Or when Elly straps knives to her boots to skate around an oil slicked room and kills countless men. And who can forget the sequence where Elly and Sam are killing people to a love filled dance sequence in smoke filled hallways, with hearts appearing in the smoke as they mow down oncoming bad guys. These action scenes would often be perfectly matched with songs that elevated each fight. The mix of over the top action scenes with catchy songs gives a very Kingsman-like feel to the movie, which is a big positive in my opinion.
As the film is a large scale spy film with countless twists, it’s good that some of the ones in the movie genuinely made my jaw drop. The first real shocker was when Elly reunites with her “mother” in a hotel in London, and it is revealed that Cranston, the presumed villain, is also Elly’s dad. Then when his cover is blown during Aiden’s burst into the room, it seems that Elly’s mom has also been lied to her whole life. After Aiden says that neither of them are Elly’s parents and shoots them both, you find out that in fact the lovable O’Hara has been in on the evil plot all along and both of them have been pretending to be Elly’s parents since she lost her memory in an accident. Not only did this entire sequence shock me, but there were definitely audible gasps throughout the audience during these reveals. The final twist that I view as actually unexpected is when it is revealed that Elly was actually a spy prior to her accident, and that the Argylle character she had created was really just her true self slipping back out of her subconscious. Perhaps I should have seen this coming after it was revealed that her “parents'' were tricking her the whole time, as it would make sense there was a reason for their actions. One could say that the fact her writing was predicting future events was reason enough, but with hindsight that suspense of reality is much further than what's needed to accept the action scenes. The only twist I did see coming was that Elly had been bad (to some degree) prior to her injury; it seemed plausible that there needed to be one final “shocking” moment in the film and the whole master file with info on everyone who had done wrong seemed like an easy way to work one into the final section of the story.
Apart from the predictable final twist, my only real gripe with the movie was the lackluster writing. Some of the jokes landed, but others felt forced and often tired. To be fair, it doesn't help that Sam Rockwell often has the energy levels of a drunk or extremely high individual. There just weren’t many lines that made me feel any sort of way. I mainly thought the interactions seemed acceptable, but there wasn't any great back and forths. Elly and Aiden occasionally had some chemistry between them, but most of the time it didn't feel like they were synced up with each other on a level one would hope for from actors of their caliber. And with the level of talent this film had on hand, I can only blame the dull dialogue on the writers, who otherwise hit it out of the park in terms of making a fun, exciting action/spy movie. However, if you are willing to not look too far into the dialogue, and rather embrace the silliness of the over-the-top fighting, you will enjoy the movie to some degree.
