Argylle Recap

Jamie

BMT Live! Always a bit of calculus goes into picking these films. Do we hit up all the horror films that our hearts desire? Do we gobble up whatever Liam Neeson (aka The Neese) is up to these days? Do we wait for Statham to roll the dice on the seventeen films he’s starring in to figure out which one comes up snake eyes (but not Snake Eyes the Nic Cage film (or Snake Eyes the G.I. Joe picture))? These questions get us all twisted into knots until we find ourselves in the theater for a $200 million Apple film starring Bryce Dallas Howard that doesn’t even have “Jurassic” in the title. So maybe catching Argylle in the cinema was a mistake. Only time will tell. But at least we didn’t burn up a film that would have been an easy connection to the year-end Chain Reaction entry. That we are still in search of.

To recap, Elly Conway is the author of the Argylle series of books about a super spy. She, however, is not a super spy… or is she (she’s not… at least not yet). After punting on the ending of her latest entry, her parents implore her to come home and hash out the ending there. On the way, though, she finds herself seated with a mysterious man, Aiden, who claims that her books tell the future and that super spies are going to be coming in to kill her. Wha-wha-what? That’s crazy. Not as crazy as all the super spy shit that happens right after. They escape and go to London in search of a masterkey that her books are apparently leading the way to. There she ends up finding out that her parents are part of the group of people trying to get her. In fact her whole life seems to have been a set up for writing these books in hopes of leading the baddies to this MacGuffin. Ultimately, Elly finds out that she and Aiden were involved… sexually. She also finds out that she was a double agent and at one point was helping the baddies do their bad shit, but then she stole the key and lost her memory. That very clearly and obviously explains all the twists. No problem. She uses this to her advantage as she is able to flip the script on the bad guys and send the key to the former CIA director. All kinds of real kooky fighting stuff happens, but it doesn’t matter because the good guys win the day and Elly and Aiden smooch… hard. THE END.

This is some real Hypnotic starring Ben Affleck shit going on in this $200 million Apple film. It’s kind of the same movie. An agent hides a MacGuffin and then their memory is erased. They then are put through elaborate mind games to try to get the agent to naturally lead them to the MacGuffin. But not so fast, the agent actually uses this against them to prevent them from getting the MacGuffin. Then in a midcredits sequence the crowd goes wild as Jeff Fahey/Henry Cavill (the Jeff Fahey of his era) appears to be alive. So imagine Hypnotic except at one point Bryce Dallas Howard slaps some knives on her shoes and skates around a room where the floor has been covered in oil. That happened. It’s mega stupid. Straight dumb. It’s like Kingsman but real dumbo for real. As an in-theater experience it was kind of horrible. Not because the movie was dumb or anything (at times that helped), but rather because it is 140 minutes long and all those responsible for that should be arrested. Hypnotic was only 94 minutes… you taking notes, Argylle?

Hot Take Clam Bake! Seems obvious to me that Elly actually was just an author with the ability to see the future that was then hypnotized into having super spy skills so that they could then double hypnotize her into being an author again. Then they could go through the ruse of revealing the original ruse (which wasn’t a ruse at all) which would trick her into using her fake spy skillz to get the masterkey (which is worthless) and handing it over Samuel L. Jackson (who is actually Samuel L. Jackson hired to portray a former CIA agent in the context of the film). This then prompts her to go back to her life as an author and write her next book which will reveal the vital secrets about the future that the bad guys are hoping to inspire her to write using the original double ruse. That then makes it obvious why the real Agent Argylle shows up at the end. He’s always been real because the books are telling real amazing stories of the future… I mean… duh, right? Hot Take Temperature: Jeff Fahey. 

Patrick? 

Patrick

‘Ello everyone! Are we talking about the worst trailer I’ve ever seen and dumb bullshit involving spies and ice skating?! Let’s go!

Jesus, where to start. The beginning of this film is quite fun I suppose, although any moment with John Cena and/or Henry Cavill is painful. It then takes a turn that … well we’ll get to that.

The whirly bird dance might also be the worst thing I’ve ever seen. I see what you are doing Vaughn, and I don’t find it amusing or clever or whatever you are thinking with this bullshit.

The entire middle of the film when she doesn’t know she’s an agent is a decent conceit if quite poorly executed and looking like shit. The idea that a mystery writer kind of vaguely stumbles onto a story that is reminiscent of real life spycraft and so they kidnap her. And then she has enough experience to kind of pull it off and crack the case? That’s almost like Miss Marple or Murder, She Wrote. An interesting concept I think. Unfortunately …

That isn’t the actual story. You see, actually the whole twist’em’up is that Bryce Dallas Howard was a spy who lost her memory in an explosion and the whole book thing was actually a way for the (evil) spy system to try and get her memory back before she exposes them all … dumb.

And of course it ends on a giant dumb looking set piece complete with (gulp) an ice skating scene in oil in which Howard kills a bunch of people with a knife.

We of course watched this film live and it is one of those films that begs the question of why it exists. As a matter of fact, why does the entire Kingsmen universe exist? The first was good, the second bad, the third not much better. Now there are like fourteen different Kingsmen adjacent films being made (including this one) and I just can’t quite figure out who will be watching / paying for these. Huge Zach Snyder energy.

Which I guess means I should float my hot take / theory: Matthew Vaughn and Zach Snyder I think maybe are being tricked / intentionally deceiving themselves into thinking their junk is popular? Imagine a world in which a PR person run amok creates a bot army that demands The Snyder Cut / The Kingsmen Cinematic Universe. Now imagine you are a narcissist who reads this PR material on like … r/MatthewVaughn or whatever. Now imagine you are convinced that everyone in the world loves the Kingsmen universe. Armed with this opinion (and the “data” to back it up) something like Argylle is created via a forged blank check. Actually that’s what I will call this: this is a Forged Blank Check film. A clear blank check film but where it doesn’t seem like the person earned it.

I think this is a weird Product Placement (What?) or perhaps more accurately Vertical Integration with the use of the (Apple exclusive I assume) new Beatles song which is, admittedly, quite catchy. We got a Road Trip film (Where?) which is truly an international affair. We have a MacGuffin (Why?) naturally (what spy caper doesn’t?) for the super secret thumb drive containing all the spy secrets that they don’t want to get out. And a final Worst Twist (How?) for the reveal that she is actually a spy and the whole thing was a ruse by the very eeeeeevil Bryan Cranston. I think this movie is Bad, boring, trite, and just plain not very enjoyable (it reminded me a bit of something like The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard).

Read about my cinematic universe in the Quiz. Cheerios,

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