Spy vs. spy vs. novelist

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This article was published 03/02/2024 (960 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

This intentionally silly spy romp promises escapist fun with an up-for-anything cast. Unfortunately, the party ends up being crashed by an exhaustingly meta and pointlessly elaborate script.

Argylle starts as an over-the-top James Bond pastiche, with a glamorous nightclub standoff followed immediately by an infrastructure-destroying motorcycle chase through the narrow, winding streets of a picturesque Greek town.

The titular spy (Man of Steel’s Henry Cavill) is an impossibly handsome international man of mystery who favours bespoke Nehru jackets and is working to bring down a shadowy global organization called the Directorate.

As it turns out, this entire sequence is the creation of Elly Conway (Bryce Dallas Howard from the Jurassic World movies), a bestselling spy novelist.

Timid, sweet, bookish Elly is happiest spending a night in wearing flannel PJs and talking to her cat, Alfie, a dismayed-looking Scottish Fold.

But when her storylines get a little too close to actual events, Elly is menaced by the agents of a real-life organization called the Division, led by the sinister Director (Breaking Bad’s Bryan Cranston, having some wily fun here). And her lone defender isn’t a suave superspy but scruffy espionage operator Aidan Wilde (Sam Rockwell, known for Moon and Vice).

Soon this oddball pair — plus Alfie, in a backpack — is racing through London, the south of France and the Arabian Peninsula in an adventure that rivals one of Elly’s fictional storylines. They’re in search of a MacGuffin-y master file that could bust open the Division’s dirty secrets and bring them down.

Director Matthew Vaughn (known for The Kingsman series and the Kick-Ass franchise) mostly keeps things flashy, fast and fun. The fight scenes are violent in a cartoony kind of way, choreographed to peppy pop songs, super-stylized and ultra-digitized to the point of absurdity. (You’ll either hate them or just give in.)

Vaughn’s smartest move, though, is to pair all this slick action with two refreshingly un-slick stars. Howard exudes regular-gal relatability, while Rockwell, as always, livens things up with his freewheeling, unpredictable energy.

Together they have a sweet, dorky chemistry and what first seems like miscasting takes on an incongruous charm as they bash their way through the tropes of the sleek, stylish spy genre.

Even Howard and Rockwell’s good work is eventually weighed down, though, by the overstuffed screenplay from Jason Fuchs (Wonder Woman). There are glints of self-aware playfulness as Elly’s imaginative creations overlap with her real-life plight. And Fuchs himself is throwing out riffs on such disparate films as Stranger Than Fiction, The Manchurian Candidate, The Long Kiss Goodnight and Three Days of the Condor.

But that would-be lightness becomes leaden as preposterous plot turns result in some screechingly abrupt tonal shifts. And the storyline has so many twists that the twisting becomes — paradoxically — predictable.

In the movie’s biggest mistake, those reversals and reveals just go on and on and on. A spy saga — say an ’80s BBC production of Smiley’s People — can stretch out for hours, but a spy caper really needs to wrap up at the 90-minute mark.

alison.gillmor@winnipegfreepress.com