Jonah Naplan   February 2, 2024

Matthew Vaughn’s “Argylle” is already the most polarizing film of 2024 and it hasn’t even gotten through its opening weekend yet. Critics have hailed it as “worthy of zero stars” or “one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen,” claims that are, of course, derived from personal taste. In its own right, “Argylle” is inherently a polarizing movie, but then again, so are the “Fast & Furious” films, found-footage flicks, the Marvel Universe, and anything else deemed “uncinematic.” Even in its best moments, the movie is sure to alienate those who find it merely stupid or a waste of time. For everyone else, however, stopping to smell the flowers and appreciate just how many gifts it contains underneath all the fluff of a loveletter to spy movie culture, will turn out rewarding, especially if you disregard convolutions and instead focus on what the movie is doing to play to our engagement, throwing everything at the wall to see what sticks. This is an extremely entertaining, nonstop, silly thrill-ride, that does get a little bit cluttered as it chugs along (all at a bloated 139 minutes), but so rarely do I get to experience a movie that’s so much fun I forget about the realities of life outside the silver screen while watching it. “Argylle” did that for me.

Director Vaughn (the “Kingsman” trilogy, “Kick-Ass,” “Layer Cake”) has been derided in the past for making movies with all style and no substance. I bring this up because, admittedly, that criticism still remains true here. But what you may easily pass up about “Argylle” is what that very “style” is doing to enhance how we feel about characters, conflicts, locations, and ideas. The movie is constantly jumping between fragments of reality and figments of imagination at a breakneck pace—one of the film’s niftiest tricks—as our heroine Elly Conway (Bryce Dallas Howard), the ambitious author of the popular Argylle spy/thriller book series, envisions the fictional Agent Argylle (Henry Cavill) in moments of desperation, fear, or distress. Cavill only exists within Elly’s subconscious; made-up worlds of dashing spies, seductive baddies, and resourceful sidekicks who swing to the rescue just in the nick of time.

The film sits on parallel tracks as it swoops back and forth between Elly’s journey as a writer—which includes writer’s block, self-doubt, and all the other usual suspects—and this fictional world which proves far more dangerous…if only at first. While traveling by train to visit her mother (Catherine O’Hara) in Chicago, Elly encounters the bearded and long-haired Aidan (Sam Rockwell), who’s there to protect her from hoards of assassins sent by Director Ritter (a sneering Bryan Cranston). Elly’s Argylle books have been seemingly able to predict real events in the world of underground crime, and Ritter believes she knows the location of a crucial flash drive containing classified information. And so begins the chase! In the same vein as so many other international action/spy flicks, our character duo hops from one big city to another, seeks refuge with trusted allies, gets double-crossed by traitors, makes friends, and questions if they can even trust one another once secrets start to be revealed in a wildly entertaining fashion.

The last hour of “Argylle,” in particular, takes a complete left turn from anything shown in the trailers and reminded me of the third acts of bonkers horror movies like James Wan’s “Malignant” and Zach Cregger’s “Barbarian.” The script by Jason Fuchs is always and completely at liberty to shock the crowd, and there are a number of outlandish sequences that will hit it big with a packed audience. Some will absolutely loathe the unabashed way this movie disregards logic, throwing such adjectives at it as “nonsensical” and “stupid” and “pointless,” but what those people hate is exactly what I love. It’s not very often that we get a movie so focused on making sure we’re entertained, or laughing, or content that it forgets to take itself seriously, which is an immediate strength, especially considering other 2024 movies, like “Night Swim,” that have already made that mistake. Of course, that sacrifice of substance and credibility inevitably comes back to hit “Argylle” in the head like a boomerang when it tries to wrap itself up in a way that feels a little too neat and convenient, but the rush of adrenaline it provides you while watching never recedes.

The marketing for “Argylle” has leaned into the appeal of an adoring feline staring at you with brazen eyes as if it knows something we don’t, and boasts the tagline “once you know the secret, don’t let the cat out of the bag”; the catch is that the movie has a new secret to be uncovered about every five minutes as the narrative constantly reframes our understanding of what’s really going on here and who the good and bad guys are, even if it appears one of them has switched sides or has become humane for a fleeting moment before retreating back to their old ways. In a film so cluttered with important characters, it’s a miracle that most of them are worthwhile and bring something interesting to the table, evolving beyond shopworn spy movie clichés. It helps that the entire ensemble is giving it their all even if, all things considered, these are far from the juiciest roles they’ve ever played. A mostly game Bryce Dallas Howard is the heart and soul of a movie that is so large in scale and constantly moving—whether by car, train, motorcycle, airplane, or what have you. Cavill, whose cunning wit and sturdy frame would have surely made him a big star in 1960s crime dramas, is playing to everything he does best in movies, while other smaller roles played by Cranston, O’Hara, and Samuel L. Jackson in the real world and John Cena, Dua Lipa, and Ariana DeBose within the fake Argylle universe do their part to fill out a quirky network that does for spy thrillers what book titles like Dirty Talk and Cowboy Come Home do for the smutty romance genre.

But the biggest stand-out here is Sam Rockwell, one of the most effortlessly likable actors working in Hollywood today, whose character is afforded, by far, the most shifts in morals and ethics. His quippy rapport with Howard grapples with the advisability of unlikely relationships, despite its many contrivances that will be too glaring for some critics to simply ignore. It’s true that “Argylle” relies way too much on coincidence to resolve problems that have written themselves into a narrative corner, and conflicts are sometimes remedied by characters simply stating that they should try this or that or whatever. But Vaughn knows how to use those people to fill out his frames in an intriguing way, continuing to learn how bodies occupy time and space; his frenetic action sequences, as they are in this movie, are always impressive, and leave you wanting more.

The job of a movie critic is to inform a reader whether they should go see a movie in any given weekend, but the truth is that I can’t come up with much of a verdict here. “Argylle” exists for a very specific audience who will love it for what it is and tries to be, and anyone who lives outside of that limited range will come up short. The movie itself, however, doesn’t care. Instead, it keeps on dancing its own dance, living in the light of adrenaline that doesn’t stop flowing. How you decide to react is a mission of your own, should you choose to accept it.

Now playing in theaters.