MIDNIGHT REVIEWS Argylle
Midnight Reviews features reviews and thought pieces written and edited by a parent, at night, after bedtime.
This afternoon’s movie…
“Pirate Spidey, Daddy.”
“We always go over this, mate. What do you have to say?”
“Please!”
Review: Pirate Spidey promises to be an entertaining romp through the Spidey world, featuring all of Spidey’s greatest hits including running, jumping and webbing people up. This episode features a tense twist, as Spidey has to decide whether he can bring himself to web up a brainwashed Aunt May. Anyway, I forget the ending, even though I’ve watched this five times this week, but Pirate Spidey is definitely one that brings reward on repeat viewings, if a two-year old’s opinion is anything to go by. When asked if the episode worked on multiple levels, our young correspondent answered with a short, terse burp.
The evening review…
ARGYLLE (2hr 19mins)
Directed by: Matthew Vaughn
Featuring: Bryce Dallas Howard, Sam Rockwell, Henry Cavill
Synopsis: When reclusive author Elly Conway’s (Howard) books are revealed to mirror real-life events in espionage, a shadowy organisation begins hunting her down. It’s up to Aidan Wilde (Rockwell) to help save her life as she comes to terms with what is real, and what is made up.
Review:
In my review for Lift, I stated that I felt incredibly disappointed having to go back on a new year’s resolution, the resolution being feeling hatred towards a movie. Feeling hatred towards a movie is a waste of time and energy and I don’t enjoy that feeling anymore. What I felt leaving the screening of Argylle was something very different. Lift made me feel tired, that something could be so lazily produced, seemingly without care (though I hope I’m wrong on this part).
With Argylle I feel personally offended.
With Argylle, I felt offended that such talent could produce something so mediocre and uninteresting.
With Argylle, I felt offended by a script that treats its audience as if they’re all children.
[A] missed opportunity to do something with a genre in such dire, desperate need of a breath of fresh air.
I felt offended by the clunky dialogue, the need for a runtime north of two hours and the fact that seemingly no lessons were learnt from Kingsman: The Golden Circle. The problems are almost exactly the same here: copious twists that don’t matter; lines resembling the structure of jokes but aren’t funny; the missed opportunity to do something with a genre in such dire, desperate need of a breath of fresh air.
Instead, here is a selection of lines someone was presumably paid to write, plus one I made up just now whilst I sit here, unpaid and without sleep.
“Don’t let the cat out of the bag.”
“I want all your agents there, now!”
“Time to write your final chapter.”
Except of course, it’s Argylle so a twist is needed. All of these lines appear in the movie, possibly copied and pasted from the preview for Spy Novels and You.
The premise is that successful author Elly Conway, writer of a beloved spy series, has somehow been including events and characters in her books that turn out to be real. Because of this a shadowy agency decides to hunt her down and kill her, for some reason. Fortunately, Aiden Wilde shows up and despite the fact he is the exact opposite of what Conway considers to be a spy, he saves her life several times before helping her uncover the truth.
What could’ve been an interesting deconstruction of the spy genre, or an interesting peek into the mind of a reclusive person and what turned them away from others, turns out to be neither. Incredibly slick and colourful but nothing more.
This is a film sold on being ‘from the twisted mind of Matthew Vaughn.’ But this film isn’t twisted, or sick, or even close to pushing boundaries. It’s by-the-numbers trying to sell itself on the premise that a hundred plot twists mean a hundred times more than one plot twist. Anyone who has seen The Sixth Sense, or Fight Club, or even The Good Place remembers what could be called ‘that twist.’ Argylle has a hundred ideas in its pocket, but none of them actually worked on or moulded into the script in a way that makes sense. Of course, there are plenty of fantastic movies that feature events or characters that don’t make sense. But here, the film also doesn’t bother helping us care about anything that’s happening. So, in a twisty, convoluted way, even if the twists did make sense, plot twist! It wouldn’t matter anyway.
Falls utterly flat.
In a similar way to the set up that someone writing a series of books so schlocky and tiresome can be so successful, I can’t figure out if the film is trying to present this tagline or itself seriously or as a gag. Eventually, the straight-faced nature of the film reveals itself, along with the fact that nothing of value will emerge.
Everyone involved in this has done better work. Matthew Vaughn, Bryce Dallas Howard, Sam Rockwell. Samuel L Jackson shows up and injects energy and good humour into a bit-part that would otherwise not be worth mentioning. Henry Cavill puts in the work, but is given nothing good to actually work with besides a short scene where his character, the protagonist in Elly’s spy series, talks through what would make a better ending. But these moments of self-reflection are few and far between and pretty soon we’re back to the usual.
There is a visually interesting shoot-out/dance sequence near the finale, but by then it doesn’t matter. Rockwell and Howard do, as has been heavily emphasised in pre-release press, have great chemistry. It is possibly the only thing able to heave the film over the finishing line.
The major issue seems to be that there is no different between the made-up world in Elly Conway’s books, the spy-thriller world that she is pulled into, or indeed the world as it’s revealed after the umpteenth twist. And with such a bloated runtime Argylle ends up tired and rote, with one person behind me in the screening tiredly pointing out one of the twists several moments before it happened. Cue a moment that was clearly meant to either elicit cheers or laughter but, just like Elton John’s copious mugs to camera in The Golden Circle, falls utterly flat.
