Argylle

Who is the real Agent Argylle? This has been the question pushed in all of the marketing for the new movie by Matthew Vaughn (Kick-Ass, Kingsman), with the answer elaborately shrouded with a slick marketing tie-in that purported an author named Elly Conway to have written the Argylle series of books that served as the film’s inspiration.

Elly Conway is, in fact, the name of the film’s protagonist, played by Bryce Dallas Howard, whose successful spy novels place her in the orbit of real spies, escorting her into a sphere of murder, deception and dual identities – a far cry from her simple domesticity writing novels accompanied by her cat, Alfie. And figuring out the identity of the real agent Argylle, the crux of which propels the story, could be situated among any of the characters in a stacked cast, from Henry Cavill to John Cena to Sam Rockwell to Dua Lipa and beyond. While the movie provides a concrete answer to its central mystery, it fails to provide a convincing response to a more important question – who cares?

This is a cloak-and-dagger story that insists heavily on twists and turns, with its narrative body breaking a few limbs in the process and destroying any emotional tissue that connects us to an occasionally endearing duo in Elly Conway and Aidan (Rockwell’s character, who catapults her into the world of espionage). In the service of pointing us to look in different directions too many times, the film indulges in a medley of Vaughn’s favourite tricks, including silly humour and jukebox musical action sequences, and runs far too long to maintain any momentum caught from a thrilling train sequence in the first act.

It’s a movie that carries a strong sense of the director chasing the high of the Freebird sequence in the first Kingsman, however, it struggles to earn the same level of character support that we had for Harry Hart and Eggsy, and the language of action cinema has developed so much over the years since then for the choreography here to really stand out. An interesting reality versus fiction element in the depiction of spies, as seen in Elly’s romanticised version (Cavill) contrasting with the real thing (Rockwell),  offers some thematic potential, which is ultimately left unfulfilled. All-in-all, Argylle is a missed opportunity for a wonderfully subversive take on the spy movie.

Musanna Ahmed

Argylle is released nationwide on 1^st February 2024.

Watch the trailer for Argylle here: