Movie review: Spy caper ‘Argylle’ so bad it’s baffling

For months, one question has plagued moviegoers: “who is the real Agent Argylle?” It’s a query posed by Samuel L. Jackson in the ubiquitous trailer for Matthew Vaughn’s spy action-comedy “Argylle,” though there are more pressing questions that the trailer presents, like, “who thought a flat-top on Henry Cavill was a good idea?” and, “why are we spelling argyle with two Ls?”

Alas, those latter questions remain a mystery, but the film does take up the former, delving into the convoluted identity of the real Agent Argylle for an absolutely unbearable 2 hours and 19 minutes. It’s remarkable really, “Argylle” has bone-deep structural issues on a fundamental level, but it is also a failure of directorial execution from top to bottom, resulting in what has to be one of the most expensive worst movies ever made. It’s honestly fascinating, this thing should be studied in a lab.

Alas, this review will have to do. The good news is that there are a couple of bright spots in “Argylle,” amongst all the digital green-screen dreck. The first is that it does have an amusing premise, which is that a mousy, anxiety-ridden spy novelist, Elly Conway (Bryce Dallas Howard), gets swept up in a real-life globe-trotting espionage plot and it turns out she’s actually pretty good at it. She’s like if Jason Bourne were a cat lady, or if the Sandra Bullock vehicle “The Lost City” was less funny. Triangulate your expectations somewhere around there, and then toggle them even lower.

Also, it is a real treat to see Sam Rockwell on screen again, doing his Sam Rockwell thing (dancing, being rakishly charming, holding down the emotional center of this airless train wreck). Rockwell plays Aidan, a real spy, not a fictional one, who scoops Elly off a train en route to her parents’ house. He informs her that her wildly popular spy novels, following the adventures of Agent Argylle (the aforementioned flat-top Henry Cavill) are eerily prescient about real-world espionage events.

Aidan is racing the nefarious organization “the Division” to capture Elly. They both want to uncover her final chapter and the whereabouts of a microchip from a hacker. What’s on the microchip? That doesn’t matter, what matters is Elly learning to get over her fear of flying, anxious attachment to her cat Alfie, whom she totes around in a backpack, embracing her own power, and of course, dancing with Sam Rockwell. The hacker is just the MacGuffin.

Now for the bad news, which is a lot. The script, by Jason Fuchs, is excessively repetitive and wordy with the exposition and themes, and Vaughn doesn’t bother with any “show don’t tell” visual storytelling, saving all his image-making for a few wildly outlandish and silly action sequences. Of course, if you’ve seen a “Kingsman” movie, you know this is his thing, but with a lot more blood geysers. Since “Argylle” is PG-13, everything is bloodless, tame and juvenile.

“But it’s fiction!” One could argue, “It’s supposed to be fantastical!” But half the movie is not fiction – we can excuse the common-sense-defying action for the sequences when Henry Cavill and pop star Dua Lipa shred their vehicles through a hilly Greek village because it’s what’s on Elly’s page. You can see what they’re going for when Cavill’s Argylle starts mumbling through Elly’s writer’s block.

But the rest of it, “in the real world,” should feel more real, and nothing about this movie feels even remotely grounded. It feels like everyone is in this movie – Bryan Cranston, Jackson, Ariana DeBose, Catherine O’Hara, John Cena, Richard E. Grant – and yet no one is in this movie at all. Each actor, aside from Howard and Rockwell, has a median average of five minutes on screen, usually spent in some inordinately cavernous room with two extras wandering around (the film was shot in June 2021, and it shows).

“Argylle” looks as flimsy and cheap as the ghastly gold gown poor Howard has to wear for the film’s third act (heinous crimes against costume design and hair-styling have been committed in this film), but how does it feel? The script and performances don’t offer us any emotional truth either, aside from the absolutely Herculean effort that Rockwell puts in. He hoists this thing up on his back and carries it, bringing humor, heart and authentic emotion to his performance, even when Howard is twirling him around in a nondescript hallway filled with colored smoke. But one man can’t do it alone, and “Argylle” fails despite Rockwell’s appealing presence.

Vaughn leaves us with the vague threat that Agent Argylle shall return, in some form, but they must return to the page if it’s to be anything worth watching, because this outing certainly isn’t.