Argylle

With the release of Argylle this past weekend, Dumpuary is finally pulling out of its nosedive. It scored the second highest opening weekend gross of this young year, and the calendar is warming up over the next few weeks as we charge towards the first truly major release in Dune: Part Two. Argylle was clearly angling to compete in the same sandbox: it’s a star-studded spy flick from the writer/director of the Kingsman franchise, and Apple bought the film for a reported $200 million¹ (almost twice the budget of Dune: Part Two). They must have spent a pretty penny on marketing, too, as the trailer has been running for three or four months, and got a slight variant in the wake of Mean Girls (for some reason). On the one hand, Apple seems to really think this could be a hit. On the other, they pushed out a film with a stacked cast at a time of low competition, and the marketing implied much of that cast would be sparingly used. If nothing else, Argylle occupies a fascinating release slot.

Regardless of its positioning, I was super excited for this film. I legit think that trailer is one of the best I’ve seen. The energy and music and rhythms of the action syncing to the beat of the sound effects and score was exhilarating, and spoke of a deliberate and careful attention being paid to elevate it above standard blockbuster fight scenes. After catching up on the whole Kingsman franchise this past weekend, I saw first-hand how Vaughn’s action choreography could be fresh and exciting and stylized, of a piece with the John Wick series (fitting since their initial entries dropped less than two months apart). To say nothing of my adoration of Rockwell.

Elly Conway (Bryce Dallas Howard) is a successful spy novelist who’s working on the fifth entry in her signature series about Agent Argylle (Henry Cavill). While taking a train to see her mom (Catherine O’Hara), she’s effectively kidnapped by Aidan (Sam Rockwell), who claims to be trying to protect her from The Division, an evil spy agency overseen by Director Ritter (Bryan Cranston). Turns out Elly’s books bear a striking resemblance to real-world events transpiring between Aidan and The Division. Now that her story’s hero is about to chase down a flash drive with the power to reveal The Division to the world, those forces seek to gain control over her. All she wants is to return home with her cat, Archie (Vaughn’s daughter’s cat, Chip).

Stranger Than Fiction meets Kingsman is a strange premise, but one I think you could do a lot with. The idea of an author’s work literally influencing events that they then experience in some way is a rich idea, as demonstrated by how often it pops up. It’s a literalization of the power of fiction, of the desire to shape the world in our image, a need for control, and an explanation of the chaos of reality. There are so many directions to go, so why not just have fun with it? Sure, I find plumbing the depths of the philosophical implications fascinating, but simply using it to drive the plot forward is perfectly valid.

It ends up just being a framing device for a spy story, but that’s okay. What’s less okay, or at least, disappointing, is that it’s so uninteresting.

Turns out that flow I vibed with so much in the trailer was purely an invention of the trailer. Instead of their re-edits capturing the feel of those action scenes in a shorter time span, they papered over the reality: pretty okay fight choreography with decent camera work and baffling music choices. And I mean baffling: what should be high energy and flashy is twisted into this weird muddle by the presence of pop music either from or styled after the 60s and 70s. But even there, they fumbled: none of it is the excellent remix of “Suspicious Minds” by Elvis employed by the trailer (apparently by group who does trailer music called Phoenician Order Minds). While the score overall is fine, during the fight scenes, it refuses to mesh with the tone.

Which is kind of emblematic of the whole film. Vaughn is angling for style first, second, and third, picking cool elements seemingly at random and thinking that combining them is enough to make a cool scene. We know he’s capable of crafting unique and engaging hand-to-hand combat: see the Rasputin “dance fight” from The King’s Man just a few years ago. But at no point during this story does it feel like he has a handle on why he’s doing any of this. For example, there’s a fight scene late in the movie featuring colored smoke. Which looks wonderful, but its tone is almost the opposite of what you’d expect and want, leading to a very jarring experience.

This muddled mess trying desperately for a cool factor holds even once you step away from music and action. Most notably, flashbacks are presented in black & white, whether to earlier in the film or to parallels between Aidan’s life and Elly’s book. All of them feature a handful of color highlights with seemingly little motivation. Maybe Vaughn was concerned the most relevant pieces of visual information would get lost in the lack of color? In which case, just make the flashbacks color.

He also has no sense of what he should show and what he shouldn’t. When your main character is supposed to be a brilliant author, there’s danger in letting us read too much of their writing. You need to convince us it’s actually good, that people would be rabid fans of theirs. If you’re a good writer, maybe you can make that land, but it takes a lot of effort which you probably don’t want to expend on what amounts to a production detail. Vaughn disagrees. We get several extended sequences of the novel, including the opening eight minutes. It makes one thing abundantly clear: she writes the most cliched dialog and story beats. Which means writer Jason Fuchs (understandably) didn’t think it was worth the time to make it good. So why show it and undermine how popular you say she is? Granted, there are some reasons that come out later on, but they required a much smaller section. Just film that, and let us take her overall skill on faith.

It sounds like a small thing, I know. But it ends up serving as a stand-in for the broader movie. The dialog is uninspired, full of cliches and bland jokes. The characters are cookie cutter. Even the plot beats end up uninteresting. Sure, there are twists and turns: it is a spy movie after all. There are even quite a few very well executed ones. Stuff I’ve seen before, sure, but deployed adeptly. After a while, though, they pile up to a degree where you stop caring. It’s not that they’re complicated; they’re just convoluted, and feel like trying to stay one step ahead of the audience at the expense of telling a story in which you can get invested. The most exhausting instances stretch out the ending to an incredible degree, giving us multiple points we expect the movie to end before some new piece of info requires it proceeds.

One last thing I couldn’t previous;y find a place for: I love when filmmakers insert little references to their other work, especially when it has no bearing on the plot. Having them fresh in my mind meant I kept an eye out, and sure enough, Elly is drinking a can of Statesman in one scene. The camera doesn’t call attention to it, but it’s not hidden either. Unimportant, but fun little Easter egg.

What Argylle really needed was to commit. For a tongue in cheek, high-concept action movie such as this, it usually benefits from leaning in. Use archetypal characters to quickly ground the audience, sure, but give us more dynamic ones to follow and care about. Push things hard, go weird, but bring it all back to real human stories and desires. If you get too caught up in your own cleverness, you start to think that’s the story, and lose yourself in a maze of twists which just serve to push the audience away. Popcorn movie or not, audiences want to form a connection. By splitting the difference, by letting the twists become the plot, we’re left with nothing to hold on to.

Except maybe the cat.