Review: 'Argylle' is a spy comedy that's loud, sometimes fun but often exhausting
If you’re familiar with director Matthew Vaughn’s work — in particular, his spy-driven action comedy “Kingsman” and its less-inspired sequels — you know everything that “Argylle” is or ever hopes to be: Loud, fast, sometimes audacious in its stylized violence, but also a little exhausting.
The opening is a stunner, introducing the super-suave spy Argylle (Henry Cavill), on his latest mission. He is infiltrating a den of villains to apprehend the villain Lagrange (Dua Lipa) — but, first, some hot dancing and some gunplay. Then Argylle and his tech-savvy sidekick, Wyatt (John Cena), capture Lagrange and get a clue on information that will bring down Argylle’s compromised agency and its director (Richard E. Grant).
And then… we find out all of the above was the latest installment in a series of spy novels written by Elly Conway (Bryce Dallas Howard), a reclusive author who lives in a house in the Colorado woods with her pet cat Alfie. (Alfie, who becomes a significant character here, is played by Chip, the pet of Vaughn’s wife, Claudia Vaughn — who went by her maiden name, Schiffer, when she worked as an internationally recognized supermodel.)
Elly calls her mom (Catherine O’Hara) for her notes on her next installment in the Argylle series, and Mom thinks Elly needs one more chapter to finish the story. Elly decides to take the train (she hates to fly) to meet Mom in Chicago, and it’s on the train that she meets Aidan Wilde (Sam Rockwell), a scraggly guy who says he’s a big fan of Elly’s books. Aidan also tells Elly that he’s works in espionage — and, to prove it, he beats up the trainload of men trying to kill Elly.
Aidan fills Elly in on a big secret: Her books are closer to reality than she knows. The shadowy agency does exist, and the director, Ritter (Bryan Cranston), has been compromised. Aidan needs Elly’s help to find a missing thumb drive that will help take down Ritter — if Aidan can get Elly to overcome her squeamishness and get the drive to Ritter’s nemesis, the former CIA director Alfred Solomon (Samuel L. Jackson).
The biggest secret in Jason Fuchs’ script — the one the studio is begging critics and early moviegoers not to divulge — is the identity of the “real” spy on which Argylle is modeled. I’m not planning to give anything away, though it doesn’t take a lot of mental agility to figure it out.
The action sequences are expertly handled and loaded with almost comical levels of violence. They feel, after a few of them, like a “Kingsman” greatest hits reel. If you liked Colin Firth’s dispatching of ruffians in that movie, there’s a sequence of Rockwell doing something similar here. If you liked the cartoonishly choreographed heads exploding there, you’ll like the colorful ballet through tear gas here. And so on.
The plot manages to be both convoluted and simplistic at the same time — with a lot of moving parts, but all of them pointing in the same inevitable direction.
The cast provides some pleasures along the way. Cavill is having fun as the debonair fictional spy (and possibly auditioning for James Bond), while O’Hara makes the most of a surprising role, and Rockwell adds his own scruffy charms as Aidan. But the most delight in the uneven “Argylle” is watching Bryce Dallas Howard revel in the sort of action-packed leading lady role she’s never been given — and, it turns out, she’s better at it than some of the male leads to whom she’s had to play second fiddle.
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‘Argylle’
★★1/2
Opens Friday, February 2, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG-13 for strong violence and action and some strong language. Running time: 139 minutes.