Argylle (2024)
Directed by Matthew Vaughn
When the plots of reclusive author Elly Conway's fictional espionage novels begin to mirror the covert actions of a real-life spy organization, quiet evenings at home become a thing of the past. Accompanied by her cat Alfie and Aidan, a cat-allergic spy, Elly races across the world to stay one step ahead of the killers as the line between Conway's fictional world and her real one begins to blur.
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5 films that influenced Argylle
What critics say influenced Argylle
The premise of Argylle has echoes of the 1984 comedy Romancing the Stone, in which Kathleen Turner stars as a romance novelist named Joan who gets swept up in an adventure that seems ripped from her book's pages. (See also the Sandra Bullock romp The Lost City). Along the way, Joan fights and then falls in love with a rugged rogue named Jack (Michael Douglas).
While The Lost City's Loretta Sage (Sandra Bullock) might not have a cat she's devoted to the way Elly is (another extremely gimmicky element of the movie), she embodies, for all intents and purposes, the same “lonely cat lady” trope.
She's like if Jason Bourne were a cat lady, or if the Sandra Bullock vehicle “The Lost City” were less funny.
A game O’Hara does her best Marlene Dietrich a la “Witness for the Prosecution.” Cranston also adds amusing beats to a one-note character.
While the romance is very much a subplot of the film, it is more genuine than comparable spy romances found in the James Bond franchise (with the exception of Casino Royale, which can never be beaten).
Turns out, he’s there to save her from the bevy of fellow spies on the train (a concept that itself reeks of the banal Brad Pitt movie, Bullet Train) out to kidnap her for, what else, her savvy spy mind.
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As a director, Matthew Vaughn (Kick-Ass, X-Men: First Class, the Kingsman series) is like a brasher, more cartoony version of Guy Ritchie, all “crazy” badass bluster and pop genre posturing, and he doesn’t alter his over-the-top ways with Argylle, a scattershot and empty-headed spy story that futilely tries to tap a Romancing the Stone (or even The Lost City) vein.
For the past decade, "Kick-Ass" and "X-Men: First Class" director Matthew Vaughn has been entrenched in the world of high-class spies, thanks to the "Kingsman" franchise. Though "Argylle" keeps the filmmaker firmly in the spy action genre, the film offers Vaughn the chance to venture into somewhat different territory thanks to the movie's many twists and turns, including a couple of showstopping action sequences, the likes of which you've never seen on the big screen before.
Vaughn, a director who has never lacked for style (see his 2004 debut "Layer Cake," or his comically violent action movie send-up "Kick-Ass"), has nothing going on here but style, and the seams are showing.
With Kingsman: The Secret Service and Kick-Ass, English filmmaker Matthew Vaughn has twice shaken up stiff action subgenres with explosive energy and irreverence.