Bryce Dallas Howard and Sam Rockwell form an unlikely spy partnership. Apple/Universal
Known for a successful literary series about an agent with great skills, the naive author Elly (Bryce Dallas Howard) ends up getting involved in a web of persecutions and mysteries that are as complicated or even more complicated than her own books. Forming an unlikely partnership with spy Aiden (Sam Rockwell), she needs to escape the target that the powerful organization Division has placed on her back due to her possession of classified material. Along the journey, fiction and reality begin to mix and the coincidences between the protagonist’s stories and hers could be the key to the mysteries.
During a long period of production and pre-launch of Argylle: The super spy, on display, the publicity material sold it as an adaptation of the work of an unknown author called Elly Conway – until recently speculated by several theories as a pseudonym for famous people. Despite the existence of the book, published in January of this year, it is now known that it is a fictional figure and that the film is written by Jason Fuchs (one of those responsible for the story of Wonder Woman, from 2017).
For those who were not aware of this external treatment, however, there are not many enigmas left to decipher in Argylle, except why a project as derivative and formally irregular as this was produced for around 200 million dollars. Bankrolled by Apple, with theatrical distribution by Universal, and directed by Matthew Vaughn (X-Men: First Class, Kick-Ass e Kingsman), the film is thought of as the first in a supposed trilogy, but it does not offer consistent material for a feature lasting more than two hours.
Despite the pedigree of the cast – which also includes Henry Cavill, in the role of the fictional agent, Dua Lipa, Ariana DeBose, Bryan Cranston and Sofia Boutella – and this extremely expensive production, For Argy has a rather pedestrian appearance that resembles Netflix originals of recent years, such as Red alert e Hidden agent, equally costly, but executed in a bureaucratic manner, without any preponderant artistic vision. They are, ultimately, films designed solely for their advertising potential, as their narratives or visual approaches rarely generate engagement some time after their debut on the platform.
Apple/Universal
Time will tell if this will have the same fate when it enters the Apple TV+ catalogue, but its characteristics are very similar: the evident use of computer graphics that artificializes the scenarios, the photography devoid of texture, the frequent sense of humor, the series of Special appearances by well-known actors accompanied by clever twists and, above all, the lack of any real weight in the action on stage. Even the well-choreographed and competent moments of For Argy they seem to exist not out of authorial necessity, but out of distraction – which also applies to the camera work, which passes through glass and flies over scenes with this same flourishing logic. It’s as if the direction constantly wants to convince the viewer that there is something very interesting happening in the plot (it doesn’t).
The absolute lack of originality in the script and the film’s twists is not, in itself, the biggest problem. After all, it is perfectly possible to transform a cliché action/espionage story into an assumed game of visual stimuli. The sagas Mission Impossible e John Wick, in different ways, are renewed with each film and transform their obsessions into almost conceptual aspects. Unfortunately, Argylle does not have the personality to come to life beyond the recycling she makes of this contemporary imagery of the genre.
The comparison with Tom Cruise and Keanu Reeves’ acclaimed action series is uneven with almost any competitor, but it’s not unreasonable considering the high cost of For Argy and the way in which the film itself places itself – through its extensive duration and metalanguage – in a package of inventiveness. If he had enough modesty to deal only with his occasional setbacks with the action, perhaps there would be something greater left from the experience, but that is definitely not the case.
Apple/Universal
It was expected, in a way, that, after financing the ambitious authorial projects Flower Moon Killers e Napoleon – also released in cinemas through agreements with other distributors –, Apple would enter into this ‘big shot film’ strategy. The choice of Matthew Vaughn makes sense for this, given that he specialized, with the franchise Kingsmanin a type of action/espionage that seeks to adapt the classic genre to a contemporary approach, mainly with the use of stylized violence and a pop playlist.
What was already out of tone and plasticized in his last films, especially King’s Man: A origemit gets even more watered down here, since not even recreational violence is present as a visual appeal and everything needs to be limited to unusual ideas (with cats, oil, colors, smoke) to compensate for the absence of its own iconography. For Argy It is, in practice, a pompous festival of disposable movements that is much less exciting than the marketing makes it seem.
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