Hello and welcome to another week here at Mindless Movie Reviews. Sometimes you see a trailer that shows you way too much, then you watch the movie and are disappointed that all the best parts were shown. Other times, the trailer does its job and only shows you enough to draw you in but doesn’t give away too much. Then you have the trailer for Argylle, which pretty much showed you the entire first part of the movie. Before I explain in detail what I mean, if you haven’t seen it yet, I would go watch it first and then come back and read what I have to say about it. In the meantime, check out my other reviews here.
Ok, so let’s get right into it. This week’s movie is Argylle, which is directed by Matthew Vaughn, the same guy who directed the Kingsman movies. Which, if you are interested there is a fun little tie-in to those during the mid-credit scenes of this one. The best way I can describe this movie is like climbing up a mountain and then tumbling down the other side. It starts with a fun vibe and a whole slew of fun characters, both in Elly’s real world and in her “book world”. But about halfway through, this train jumps off the track, derails, and takes everything down with it.
This movie follows Elly Conway (played by Bryce Dallas Howard) as she has just finished writing her fourth “Argylle” book and is starting on her fifth one. Things start to pick up when she gets on a train to go home and meets Aidan White (portrayed by Sam Rockwell). I am a huge Rockwell fan, so I was excited to see what he would do with this role. He didn’t let me down as he shined throughout, unfortunately, he was the brightest bulb in the drawer as almost everyone else let me down.
We soon find out that Aidan is a spy and he is there to save Elly from some bad guys who are trying to capture her for her knowledge and what she is writing in her books. Let me pause here a moment and talk about her “book world” where we get to see her books acting out in real life with Henry Cavill playing Argylle, Dua Lipa as Lagrange, and John Cena as Wyatt. Lipa is barely in the movie at all and Cena shows up from time to time, but Cavill is there only as Howard’s internal dialogue to help her get through certain moments. This goes back to seeing the trailer and thinking they had bigger roles to play in the overall story.
As Aiden and Elly are on the run, it’s a mostly enjoyable ride, even with the consistent cat jokes that won’t stop. I even liked the early scenes of the mastermind behind it all… Director Ritter (played by Bryan Cranston) and his stop-at-nothing attitude to capture her. However, the phone calls with her mom (portrayed by Catherine O’Hara), always looked a little off to me. It’s at this point in the movie that everything starts to go South.
Elly isn’t really Elly, she is a spy herself named Rachel Kylle who used to work with Aiden and the books she was writing were actually true events that she is remembering slowly. As she starts to remember who she is and what is supposed to happen, we learn that her dad is Ritter (Cranston) and her mom is working for him… oh and by the way, they are not even her real parents. She was brainwashed to think she was Elly and that they were her parents.
Then if the twists and turns weren’t enough already, Aiden and Rachel were in love and had been for some time. But right when you think they are about to crack the case together, she finds out that she was one of the bad guys the whole time. She shoots Aiden and attempts to find their companion Alfie (Samuel L. Jackson), only to try to then double-cross her “parents”. At this point, it may be a triple-cross as she decides to do the right thing and decides to send the Masterfile that everyone has been after to Alfie. The whole thing becomes a convoluted mess with Aiden somehow still alive because she shot him through a tiny spot in his heart where it went through, and then they do some lovers dance while shooting rainbow gas and taking out a plethora of bad guys.
They all accumulate in a room where a bunch of oil is leaking and she pulls out a memory of being an amazing ice skater, so naturally she can put some knives on her boots and skate through the oil to take them all out. All the craziness and silliness culminate in a scene very reminiscent of the first Naked Gun movie where Ruth (her “mom”) plays some music that makes Rachel turn on Aiden. In the end, love and another character who survived a shot through the heart wins the day they send the important info to Alfie, and everyone lives happily ever after.
With a stellar cast like this, it’s hard to tell you how disappointed I am with the finished product I witnessed. I now see why the trailer showed what it did. They showed the best parts and hid all of the plot turns and twists. So kudos to them on that, but overall I am disheartened with a movie that looked so good up until I was watching it. Most of the actors did a great job with the roles they had, but they were just pigeonholed by the bad writing. Another big kudos to Bryce Dallas Howard for standing her ground on her body image. I was reading a few articles about her not being a “normal” size for a female action star and how she didn’t care about being cast as someone like that. So good on her for being herself.
However, with that being said, I can’t give this movie anything more than a 5 out of 10. It’s that high mostly because of Sam Rockwell and his ability to carry this movie on his back.
