Movie Review: Argylle

 

Hey everyone, my name is Anthony and welcome everyone to my very first Movie Review in the year 2024.

Yes, my friends, im back in duty to do another a yearly modern Movie Review, sure I can do reviews from the past, but you guys already know the drill. Aside skipping over January, the most cursed month ever for revealing ok to mediocre films.

So with all that said, lets start my year off for what if we have a movie about life imitates art, with a man formerly known as Superman?

“Argylle” is a 2024 spy action comedy film that was produced/directed by Matthew Vaughn, written/co-porduced by Jason Fuchs (Ok seriously, who names Fuchs at the end? Honestly??) and co-produced by Adam Bohling and David Reid.

When it comes to Matt Vaughn, he had some fascinating that gave us at the time that I know like Stardust and Kick-Ass. But of course, he’s also give movie the adaptation of Kingsman with some good to mixed results. When it comes to his idea of Argylle, its a tough task what the movie was first developed. According to Vaughn, he wanted to make his own James Bond style movie with Henry Cavill. In fact, Cavill was originally intended to playing as Agent 007 in Casino Royale, but didn’t make it due to his younger age, which sounds like Vaughn wanted if its gonna be worth to show us how it could’ve been a former Superman playing as Bond, or so we thought.

So, with all that said, will it worth of making story with special spy with cute cat, or is it too risky to do the action life imitates the art?

Well, lets find out.

The Story

Now, you think the story would be a unique concept of life imitates the arts for purpose of gun-fu? Well… No.

The movie begins where we’re in a story within a story, where Argylle is in a dance club with a beautiful lady, only to be ambushed by her with terrorist group for escape, only to be caught by Argylle’s partner Wyatt that Argylle and Wyatt went into fancy interrogation to asking the evidence before she killed herself with poison, ended on a cliffhanger. Jumped into real world, we introduced Ella Conway who’s a successful author of Argylle novel series, however, once she’s working in the 5th novel, she’s lost to leaving the project unfinished. But once she’s in the train to visiting her parents, Barry and Ruth, for her unfinished plan (I think), she’s gotten herself being targeted by terrorist organization, but then she was helped by a real spy named Aiden Wylde to taking them down, telling her the way they’re going after is because her novel series are predicting the future (aka real life imitates the arts). Its up to Ella and Aiden to working together as a double spy to stop the terrorist without prediction from the novel.

Now, this may sounds like a cool concept for how the novel predicts the future for pure coincidence, but this one is more focus on action rather than predicting the tragedies (kinda like Titanic, but different story), especially for how the action scenes reminded her from the novel when she saw. But alas, all good things came to at end very quickly, because story of this movie became a convoluted mess how if its either predicting predicting the future or how the inspiration of Argylle came from, which I would like the novel predict to future to fight back to stop the prediction would work, but they completely changing the subject from the 2nd act to giving us a plot twist, and let me tell you, when it comes to the plot twist, this is easily the worst one that it pissed me off so badly that completely loses the subject of the plot what we like to see, but im not gonna give you a full detail, cause you’re definitely never know how between the plot twist and the writing is so bad that its a complete mess from beginning to end, not to mention for 2h long movie, I’ve been begging to stop focusing on the plot twist, get to action and role the credits, its almost like this movie is so slow with cheap twist development with poor humor attempt. But not to mention for the latter, when they’re trying to make a humor, they feel so low-brow that I barely able to make more than a small chuckles, cause most of the jokes are just poorly attempt with cheap culture references or not even trying to be funny.

The idea of the movie would’ve been a good idea, but its just the writing is both badly written for missing the subject, bullcrap plot twist and the jokes are barely trying to be “Funny” from beginning to end.

The Presentation

I think its safe to say that the movie’s presentation with action scenes are definitely the main highlight than the writing itself.

For starter, the locations are surprisingly nice pick like filming in UK with London, England, along with production used studio from Greenford, Park Royal and even Bovingdon. Though they also using both Greece and United States as a filming backgrounds, while the res was filmed somewhere in Europe outside of UK.

As for action scenes, I think they’re easily the ONLY good thing in this movie, they have a nice action moments with fist fights and shooting guns (aka Gun-Fu), but one part that I like is the double vision effect from Ella when she sees Aidan reminded him as her fictional spy Argylle, which some moments from the novel predicted the future. Some action scenes are also have some creative moments that Il give a credit what they’re trying, either crafting gadget or even some unique camera works. However, despite the best effort, sometimes there are couple of times they either using green screen or even CG, which they can be question, or maybe it looks like they forgot to realizing its 2024, not 2014. However, one part that distracted and concern me is why would they put a cat during the action scenes, like I get its nice to show us a creative backpack with a glass for cat’s view, but what was the point to have a cat in action scenes?

While the soundtrack are passable at best, but one pert that boggles me, is the usage of The Beatles “Now and Then”. For those if you don’t know, “Now and Then” is one of The Beatles latest song they ever gave us last year, and its no stranger that this is the last one for good since the song project was left on a dark after The Beatles had a broken down breakup at the end of the 60s, but its a long different story. Anyway, which for some reason, they probably had the audacity to using this song for the purpose for the plot, which not only its just plain stupid, but also exploitative to put in the movie, despite this was The Beatles’ lost project turned reality since Linkin Park’s Lost.

Aside the problems I have, the movie’s presentation looks good and the action scenes are the only good thing about this movie.

The Characters

Despite the movie has a buttload of familiar casts, you think the characters would help to be go-- NO!!!They’re just poorly written and worthless, for the most part…!

Lets start off with Ella Conway (played by Bryce Dallas Howard, aka Gwen Stacy in Spider-Man 3), she’s the author of Argylle series who’s trying finishing her novel, despite she’s gotta be involved with action scenes. This may sounds like a unique idea as I said before, but it was already down hill with plenty of bad writing and bad plot twist about her or even her novel’s origin that she’s either idiot or clearly made us look like idiots (or both?). Im not trying to bashing her, I think she did a nice work of her performance, but its just the way she was written for being either cowardly or an idiot is clearly made her being a worst protagonist.

Next up, we have Aidan Wylde (played by Sam Rockwell, aka Mr. Wolf from The Bad Guys), a real spy who, I think, taking similar footstep from Argylle to protecting her to uncovering who she is. Even though he’s also not helping for a bad writing, but I think he’s an okay character, which begs my question, why can’t the movie focuses on him for being a fanboy turned aspired spy from the novel for the sake of saving the author. I guess you can say that he’s also a good one in the movie, but its too bad the writing didn’t help him very much.

And we have Conway family (if you can call that), Ritter and Ruth (played by Bryan Cranston, aka Walter White, and Catherine O’Hara, aka Kate McCallister from Home Alone), they’re the family in their Division for sabotaging her for for either finish the novel and meet her death from blood. They may sounds like a interesting idea, but again, too bad the writing is poorly done for bunch of clichés like a main villain who’s always watching or threatening his terrorists or Ruth being a caring mother who’s trying to help Ella for doing the right way for the novel, but she’s just there for, again, wasted from a bad writing.

Oh, you’re probably wondering about the titular character Argylle? (played by the former Superman, Henry Cavill) Well, at first, he’s a fictional protagonist that Ella created him. But he’s also into her subconscious what the action scenes reminds her from the novel or even trying to motivating her, which, on paper, would’ve been a secondary protagonist to helping her to help Aidan and motivation. But its too bad he’s pretty much a wasted of space for limited appearance in the movie, again, im aware he was meant to be the new James Bond, and this is what we got? Though I find him did a nice job, but again, too bad he’s completely wasted in the movie since the cringing CG facial on Joss Whedon’s version of Justice League.

As for the rest, like I said, they’re just a wasted opportunity for, you guessed it, high profile appearances for the sake of high profile appearances.

There’s Keira (played by Ariana DeBose) who’s Ella’s late friend, Wyatt (played by John Cena, aka Peacemaker, aka Super Cena in WWE) who’s Argylle’s partner, and Alfie (played by Samuel L. Jackson, aka Nick Fury in Marvel Cinematic Universe) who’s the former CIA deputy and the boss of “Masterkey”.

Because of the bad writing, the characters are clearly making the characters being both worthless and wasting the appearance, but also wasting a good talent with our familiar actors.

And now for my final opinion of this movie

Overall, Argylle was already a bad start to kick off this year, cause this movie is the most broken down mess for both action movie and comedy movie!

Aside of giving us some pretty good presentation, a fun and creative action scenes and one good character, but everything else is mish-mash of mess with bad writing to giving us a weak story, the jokes are barely a “jokes”, a waste appearance of familiar actors, exploitative song for the purpose of the plot and also has the worst plot twists I’ve ever watched.

This movie is just so bad that it pisses me off when I was in theater much like when I watched TTG’s movie, I was supposed to have a hope to be fun, but it failed all over for being a wasted opportunity of action-comedy movie with the levels of stupidities, which like I said, with all the bad twists, I was begging for rolling the credits.

This is the movie that its not worth of your time to watching this dumpster fire. So do yourselves a favor and learn from my mistake as always, don’t even bother to watching this time wasting action-comedy movie, its nowhere fun and it insults our minds from the poorly written twists that it makes M. Night Shyamalan movies look good.

For those reasons, im gonna give this one a 3/10, along with earning the Dumpster Fire of FAILURE.

So this ends of my movie review (Again, already a bad start for 2024), if you guys have your opinion or any suggestions, let me know at comment bellow and support me on KO-FI.com/blackevil.

Thanks for reading, and im Anthony, signing out.