I am absolutely delighted to report that "Argylle" is in the running for the worst movie of the year already, and I do not long for whatever its competition may be. It is the sort of movie which makes you question why its director was ever popular to begin with, and retroactively start to re-evaluate work of theirs you previously thought was good.
I'm going to get this out of the way quickly, because his big face is all over the marketing of this movie: Mr Henry Cavill is in this movie for about 8 minutes, right at the start, and right at the end, peppered throughout like a spice for weirdos who think his portrayal of Superman was good; and he is ironically emblamatic of one of the movie's myriad of problems.
This is one of those movies where I want to dissect it on a table, to cut it open and figure out just what went wrong, but also where its beating heart lies. I've just exited this movie and cannot tell you what this movie is about.
The 2.5 (!) hour runtime already should ring alarm bells, clarion calls of self-indulgent smugness not seen since Joss Whedon was allowed to make "Age of Ultron" or Matthew Vaughn committed "Kingsman: The Golden Circle". Its first hour is spent telling us that none of this matters, because after all what is real and what is not? Henry Cavill blends into the fight scenes as hallucinations of our main character, only he may be real only he may be not, only he may be her sub consciousness or Elly herself (a reveal later almost made me fucking walk). Just calm the fuck down, these add and enhance nothing, you're literally telling me not to care about any of this. Its comedy and attempted rapport of the ever-wonderful, trying his best Rockwell and Bryce Dallas Howard is aiming for "Romancing the Stone" but leans more into "Fellating the Vaughn", smugness and snide sneering contempt for tone and sensibilities permeating every single scene. The jokes land flat on their face, and its cartoonish attempts at "over the top fight scenes" are a far cry from the legitimately stunning church set-piece in "Kingsman": a smoky sequence set to Leona Lewis (why? Not in general, though that too, but when the rest of the movie has been using entirely disco music for every single action scene up until this point, often playing them in their entirety. Honestly, "And we Run" by Xzibit and his backing band Within Temptation would have made as much, if not more sense in the scene, but I digress as usual) and a limp, flaccid cartoonish ice ballet on oil in a pale imitation of the works of "The Transporter" of all things just become anemic shadows of movies I would rather be watching. There is no tension, there is no drama, there are greater stakes in a number from "Oklahoma!". Here there is a black hole of excitement and vision. Here there is no God.
There is only "wackiness". This isn't even "Kingsman", this is "The Golden Circle", and woe betide anyone who remembers that film.
Vaughn and co tell everybody to play it with their tongues beyond their cheeks and instead slathering the scenery with the saliva of people who hate the very concept of cinema. The script has the audacity (in between 7, I counted, separate exposition dumps) to have a character complain about tone and how it shifts. Not even the villain (Bryan Cranston, trying his best) plays it straight, except for when he wants to, only not really. When the remainder of the twists join an already overloaded script, it becomes something akin to "Glass" filtered through a half-remembered "Perfect Blue" or, Remar help you, "Hypnotic", but with a sensibility best described as "more is more". Ironically this all falls completely flat. Even the thing Vaughn is normally good at: crafting candy coloured mayhem, is absent here. I remember the teleportation murders in "X-Men: First Class" (RIP Oliver Platt, wasted in every movie you do), and of course I remember the church sequence in "Kingsman" (despite Lynard Fucking Skynard: every small-town boomer's favourite band that the kids just "don't get"), I even remember the great diner sequence in "Layer Cake". But here? There's one on a train clearly aiming for "Bullet Train" and "John Wick" vibes, with the addition of aforementioned jump-scare Cavill; and the DIRE physics defying ice skating on oil with a CGI Dallas Howard; but they are not going to be remembered, and are in service of nothing. It makes a lot of hay about its Bond movie pastiche at the start, trying to tie it into the script's "real world" implications later on, like "The Manchurian Candidate" (which I believe it references. Golden rule, Matt: never name drop a better movie than yours in your film) but instead just come across as tacked on: it's not a case of mismatched tones (that's for the rest of the script) but instead quite the opposite problem: they're the same tone. There's no volume button, the broad comedy of the Cavill sequences is not differentiated from the Dallas Howard sequences. Hell, the entire thing could have been saved by having one of them play it straight. It wants us to believe Cavill is parodying his "James Bond-esque charm" and Sam Rockwell is playing his "action movie persona", but I've not had those things. I do, in fact, want a played-straight Sam Rockwell action movie in the vein of "Nobody" or hell, just "Confessions of a Dangerous Mind" again but not a mentally ill person. I do, in fact, want a movie where Cavill and "Jackson Hammond 4-Time Nominee" Dua Lipa play Bond and the Bond Girl, but instead have to put up with them smirking at joke only Vaughn finds funny.
In another world, this would have been funny.
That world requires an editor, and a script superviser. And a merciless set of scissors. Only 9 year olds could find the appeal in this, but funnily enough it would never work for them because it's too slow, boring, convoluted and messy, and full of half-written in jokes with no punchline, to work.
Was "Kingsman" ever good? I'll have to rewatch it.
Fuck me I picked the wrong month to not drink alcohol.
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