By Gilberto Campa
The Spy genre has been and continues to be one of the most popular story types that creators love to tell. Going back to its roots, many of the popular story architects and tropes were created by writers such as John Buchan, Len Deighton, John Le Carre’ and of course the writer behind the Bond novels, Ian Fleming. Most of the time the spy stories usually go in two different directions when it comes to tone, either completely grounded or serious, or completely off the rails in fantasy and belief (in a fun way). Since his work as a producer for a few of Guy Ritchie’s earlier films, Matthew Vaughn has created stories of his own that pay tribute to the espionage thriller that audiences from all around the world enjoy, but in his own wild and ridiculous way.
Starting back in 2015’s Kingsman: The Secret Service which was Mathew Vaughn’s homage to James Bond and the movies that he grew up watching, it was clear that Vaughn has a sensibility and style all to his own. Audiences were treated to action sequences and visually compelling choices that were never seen before, let alone imagined before I might add (that may or not be for everyone). Ten years later Vaughn continues that form of storytelling with Argylle but in a much more complex way and not as British as his previous films. The film is stacked with some of the most recognizable actors working today, such as Henry Cavill, John Cena, Samuel L. Jackson, Bryce Dallas Howard, Bryan Cranston, Catherine O’Hara and Sam Rockwell who all bring something different to the movie.
The story begins as we are introduced to Elly Conway (Bryce Dallas Howard) who is one of the most recognizable writers in the world known for her hit spy novel series…Argylle. Currently working on her fifth installment to the series, her life turns upside down as the events in her novels begin to catch up to her in real life as she starts to get involved in real espionage, whether she wants to or not. The story progresses in a way that keeps you entertained and wondering what is going to happen next, but like a novel there are twists and turns that occur that are supposed to keep you on your toes. Unfortunately, that is one of the aspects of the movie that didn’t work for me, without going into spoilers as much of this movie is hidden in the trailers and doesn’t reveal too much as to what is happening. The second half of the film fell apart for me as the MAIN twist, which was done well, gets lost as more revelations happen after the fact that end up confusing the audience Imo.
The chemistry between Bryce Dallas Howard and Sam Rockwell worked in some instances but was a miss overall for me, but it didn’t stray me from watching it. Don’t get me wrong there are still some entertaining parts of the movie that I liked such as the humor (when it worked) Sam Rockwell bringing his charm, impressive ass kicking, and dance moves to keep a smile on your face, and a few crazy action sequences with one towards the end that I’ve never seen in a movie before that was a wonderful surprise. In one way the movie works better in parts than the overall whole and you could tell that the entire cast was having a good time making this as the element of disbelief gets taken away, but the different balance of tones also made things more difficult as you didn’t know where things would go next. With a longer-than-usual runtime that you feel at one point in the movie, it seems like Vaughn just wanted to include as much as he could from a creative standpoint, but in this case less would have been better than more.