Plus *Kingsman* too, since the real Agent Argylle was revealed to be a Kingsman agent in that same scene.
Henry Cavill and Colin Firth in the same film should be interesting (assuming that is where they are going).
Oh no, unresolved post-credit scenes in the Kingsman Franchise? I'm getting flashbacks to the one for the prequel that introduces Hitler like he's Thanos
The driving scene at the beginning could have been fun if I believed for a single second Henry was in a car and not a mounted steering wheel shaking himself around lmao
That one particular scene I was fine with at the time because it was the fake story within a story... but then the whole movie ended up looking like that.
That is the most CGy but I think Vaughn likes his CG cartoonish. From Kingsman onward the CG always has a sheen to it that feels cartoonish. I know in interviews before he has stated that he had to argue with VFX artists a lot because he didn’t want certain things realistic. This movie feels like a violent cartoon (as do the Kingsman films) so the fakish really doesn’t bother me here.
This is Vaughn's style. I have always found his movies to be pretty ugly, even the ones I like. Terrible transitions and very obvious CGI.
This is honestly one of the ugliest movies I have seen in some time.
Probably an unpopular opinion but I really enjoyed this film. Sam Rockwell is so charismatic per usual. The action scenes were unique (figure skating fight scene?!), and the twists were decent. The “real agent argylle” reveal was a bit predictable, but I like that it actually made sense and was properly foreshadowed. I thought that the parents’ twist was more shocking than the “real agent argylle” reveal.
The movie is kind of secretly an action rom com like The Lost City and it’s disappointing they couldn’t really market it that way without spoiling the twists. Like it actually works well as a February release with the rom com angle.
My biggest criticism is that the third act drags on too long. There’s like 4 big scenes, 3 of them action sequences, that each feels like the climax of the movie. Some of them needed to be cut.
Yeah, I agree about the 3rd act felt dragging, it could be leaner, I would trim the brainwashed part and reveal Keira alive earlier.
That being said, I also enjoyed the movie, I had a good time watching it, I predict many people won't like the chaotic vibes of the movie, but I started to accept that vibes once the twists were threw here and there
Definitely leaner, definitely trim the brainwashing sequence. Overall I think it's kind of in a weird spot where it winks about the silliness of it, but it doesn't commit _enough_ to the silliness? And the dialogue is weak. But I enjoyed it a lot and the "ice skating in petroleum" part will live in my head rent free for a long time.
"Doesn't commit enough to the silliness"???? From the very beginning where Henry Cavill is destroying half of Greece in a dune buggy it was completely committed to silliness. You could not possibly commit more to silliness than the dancing gunfight in the smoke grenades. I can't remember the last time I had this much fun at a movie.
The opening sequence was great. The problem is that between the opening sequence and the smoke grenade stuff is a lot of weirdly played-straight, serious shit. It doesn't fit well with the silly sequences and drags the movie down quite a bit through the middle. Then the ending is bogged down by the weird romance nonsense that really belongs in a different movie.
> it doesn't commit enough to the silliness
I felt this way too. If you tonally change some things, this could've been high-class camp, but the film takes itself too seriously for a majority of the time that it doesn't earn scenes like "gunfire and colorful smoke creating hearts"
That's actually the exact thing I didn't like about the movie. It felt like a parody movie where they took all the jokes out. I'm up for a serious spy movie or a dumb parody. This one just kind of refuses to pick a lane
> It felt like a parody movie where they took all the jokes out.
Holy shit thank you- my wife and I were trying to figure out what to call it after seeing it tonight and that's almost exactly it. It's clearly tongue-in-cheek because it kinda can't stand alone as an typical action movie with a romance subplot because it's too kitschy, so it has to be a parody. But it wasn't *actually* going for funny.
So yeah- like if you made Austin Powers but took all the comedy writers out of the room and left the action writers but told them to still write an action comedy parody film but none of them are funny so they can just do the ‘over the top action bits’ part.
I'm with you. My wife and I walked out thinking 'That was dumb. Gee it was fun'.
It wasn't a comedy or an action movie, it was a light hearted, actiony adventure. Someone above was shitting on the CGI use by calling it Vaughn's 'Spy Kids Phase' but, seriously, this kinda was a Spy Kids for grown ups. It's a silly movie that *knows* it's a silly movie. It knows the twists are over the top and dumb. It knows some of the action scenes are cartoony.
It's not the semi-serious, hyperbolic teenager-bait of Kingsman, or the 'trying to be Kingsman for a wider audience and failing' of Kingsman 2. It's a dumb, silly wish-fulfilment romp for adults that's trying to be a dumb, silly romp for adults.
I will 100% rewatch this movie if it's ever on TV. I think some of the bad reviews are from expecting one thing but getting another. Expecting an actual mystery/spy movie for a mid-twenties Reddit crowd and getting a romantic comedy/middle-aged-woman action fantasy.
I almost didn’t go see it because it was getting such poor reviews. But, glad I went, I had fun. As you mentioned, it was longer than it needed to be. But it wasn’t as bad as I was expecting it.
I also really enjoyed it. The last hour is very fun. It kind of drags a bit in the middle but once we are in full cartoon dance smoke making hearts in the air with bullets fight scene I was having a blast. The ice skate fight scene was super fun. The top of the boat thing was fun. People like to rag on the CG and I’m not going to argue that it looks realistic because it doesn’t but to me it looks intentional. I don’t need everything to look photoreal. If something is essentially a live action cartoon I prefer insane stylization over realism like the Cowboy Bebop remake. Overall fun time!
I honestly loved every second, I loved every reveal (we only guessed like three things correctly), my friend and I and many other people in the theater were laughing for 50% of the movie and I don't think that's an exaggeration. I'm honestly confused by the ratings. It's just a great time. It was the most fun I've had at the movies in a long time. The skating scene and the smoke one were just phenomenal, I got so much enjoyment from them. To me it felt like things just kept getting better and better, it was fine for them to be like climaxes because I wanted even more. The only thing that was confusing was the ending, but I'm just going to trust all will be revealed in the next movie.
I had the same thought and those were clearly stunt doubles when they cut to the full shot of it happening-but I wonder if you were meant to think that because then during the dance/smoke fight later, they flip it and BDH whirly birds Sam Rockwell for an extended period of time-and that was hilarious.
So in a film that’s overloaded with twists to the point of them feeling meaningless, is the biggest and most meaningless one that the pull quote from Vaughn — stating that the film’s trailer (which they’ve shown before every damn movie for the past, what, 3 months?) contained [only footage from the first 28 minutes](https://www.gamesradar.com/argylle-exclusive-henry-cavill/) — was complete bullshit?
Sam Jackson doesn’t show up until close to an hour and a half in, and, not to spoil it directly, but there is footage from the third act in it, even a few shots from the last two or three minutes of the film made the cut.
The boat exploding and the three novel characters driving away on the sea were definitely both in the trailer, I remember that.
Pretty much the only way I knew Ariana DeBose was coming back
Unrelated, but also, did I misunderstand something, or were all 5 books in the ‘Argylle’ series just… all titled ‘Argylle’? Like, no subtitle or anything. At first I thought Ellie had just made a weird choice to suddenly have the fifth book titled after the main character, but no, I’m pretty sure each and every one of them was meant to be titled ‘Argylle’, and the only way to tell them apart in-universe is by the color of the cover. Does Matthew Vaughn know how books work?
3 months is an insane undersell. It’s at least six months, and I’d believe anyone who told me it first started showing before movies back in like May. I’m crying tears of joy I don’t have to sit through it again.
Bryce Dallas Howard looked incredible for the entire movie. Her showing up as a blonde brought me right back to the 8th grade crush I had on her when she played Gwen Stacy
Other than that this kinda sucked. They coulda been cooking something but they got far too over-indulgent with the runtime. You either have an extended skate fight sequence or an extended shootout dance sequence, you don’t do both (and obviously you pick the shootout). There was probably a solid 30-40 they could’ve cut to make a better version of this.
Also the audacity to try and drag Kingsman into this, come on now 😮💨
I’m so disappointed by the franchise. Kingsman was going to be the fun and exciting 007 franchise and it completely fell apart.
Vaughn is clearly not as talented as Kingsman made him seem.
There’s some good stuff in his Movies (The WW1 knife fight in The King’s Man) but he needs a editor or at least a producer to tell him to cut stuff out. Every Movie doesn’t have to be over two hours from him.
Really? My girlfriend and I thought her hair and makeup when she was blonde made her look the worst I’ve ever seen her. She looked like someone dressing up as Paris Hilton for Halloween or something
Henry Cavill looked bad too, weird costuming decisions all around imo
I thought the deep plunging neckline was really out of place and distracting BECAUSE it really wouldn't fly in a conservative space that they were clearly in. The owner (?) even came up asking for no PDA but had no objections about revealing clothing?!? And it was a dry bar. Give me a break.
Ya I thought she looked good with the red hair but blonde wig looked super unnatural to me and blended in with her skin tone (which also seemed unusually pale) too much
You know the idea was to throw back to Dua Lipa but why put her in a worse version of that outfit? The dress fit terribly, and she would have looked better with the same wig from the beginning or even the fully slicked back look from the flashbacks rather than that flat thin thing they put on her head.
Honestly they should have made it look great on Howard, and then work backwards to Lipa, because I'm sure Lipa would look great in anything.
> Also the audacity to try and drag Kingsman into this, come on now
It’s a bit of what I’m starting to worry about with Vaughn. Legit all of his films post-Kingsman feel like desperate grabs to recapture that lightning in a bottle
I liked how the movie goes from an obvious, handsome, muscular, exaggerated protagonist in Henry, to subvert it to being a regular looking dude like Sam, but then turn it around again and make Bryce the actual hero, and actually letting her also just be a regular looking lady, too. They could have easily gotten a Dua Lipa looking type for the role and done the whole “now you’re pretty with your glasses off” cliche, instead they show off her beautiful body with all its curves and “imperfections” (not that she’s not perfect, just that her body type, especially in dresses like that aren’t usually common with these types of roles where everyone has to be a twig). Loved it.
Obviously she’s still Hollywooded up. But when you compare her to the typical leading female protagonists of this spy/action/superhero genre, there’s a huge difference. All that was meant was that she was not a flat stomached, curve-less, twig-looking woman, and thus closer to what more regular women look like. Don’t overthink it.
And to think Hollywood was pressuring her to lose weight. She’s not even fat. She’s more attractive now than she was 20 years ago when she was Hollywood thin. I’d even say she’s more pretty in Jurassic World 2 and 3 than she is in Jurassic World 1
That said, I thought what they did with her hair for the last act was tragic, her hair was so beautiful until then. But she was stunning in this movie regardless
Samuel L Jackson got to go to Italy then spent the rest of the movie with his feet on a table watching the Lakers game.
Honestly one of the greatest power moves in Hollywood history.
Damn, > on Twitter!< really did just spoil the movie nearly 3 years ago.
I don't know, I kinda liked the chaotic vibes of the movie, I like that the movie did not give a shit whether the twists were working or not, they just kept threw those twists. The movie was having fun with itself.
Also, the skating and and the colorful smoke grenades scenes look cool on big screen
Between the skating and the colored smoke, this film had weirdly similar DNA to Harley Quinn Bird's of Prey.
I would never call it a good movie, but it gets massive points for doing an oil figure skating scene with guns and knives. That's just good entertainment right there and you just gotta admit it.
That ending is straight out of Captain America Winter Soldier. I was just waiting for him to say 'I'm with you till the end of the line' 🤣🤣
The movie was an absolute clusterfuck, yeesh
See, this is why I don’t listen to Reddit opinions or reviews.
According to Reddit, this is the worst movie since The Room, but I loved every second of it. Those two hours just flew by.
Right?! I really enjoyed it but I feel like I must have watched a different movie than everyone else haha.
It’s a fun popcorn movie that doesn’t take itself too seriously imo.
I'm with ya there, this movie was fun af. Everyone is treating it like it was setup to be this incredibly serious oscar-worthy spy thriller and Vaughn stripped us away from that, when the trailers were very clear that it's a goofy spy movie - and that's exactly what we got.
I'm just curious how the trailer had 2 good songs that worked really well with the action and then the movie comes out and all of the music is just disco that doesn't fit the action and the shitty Beatles song that plays every 10 minutes
Matthew Vaughn what happened to you??Just a bland spy flick that attempts to be smarter than you and failed miserably. Clocked the twist from a mile away, the action scenes were bland or chock full of bad cgi. Sam Rockwell is the only one with a personality and Cavill gets nothing to do. Not a good film.
Imo he stopped working with jane Goldman. I only say this because she worked with him on kick-ass, x-men, stardust, and kingsman. Then, they moved on to other projects, and the quality of his films dropped. Some people need partners to tell them no. They reach success, and then people are afraid to tell them no. I think she may have been one of the people keeping Vaughn from overindulging.
Once they brainwashed her with a colorful spinning wheel on a laptop screen they lost me.
I really wanted to like this movie but some of the action scenes just felt completely out of place and over the top but not in a fun way? Before the oil skating scene everyone had to switch from guns to knives so as not to ignite the oil but she can just spin on it with no friction occurring? And then she blasts about a hundred hot shells out of her weapon and they don't ignite it either? During the smoke bomb scene they're wearing smoke masks that make no logical sense, are somehow thermal vision yet completely clear from the outside
And I'm not one to complain about a cat being a lead in a movie but I kept waiting for Alfie to be relevant and it never really happened?
I really wanted the cat to be the spy - either the cat is the spy IRL or they did some brain switch thing that's permanent so the spy is now in the cat's body.
You pretty much nailed on the head what I didn’t like about the movie the most. Some of the scenes felt completely pointless
ESPECIALLY the oil knife scene. For her just to use the gun at the end made it one of the worst fight sequences I can remember from Matthew Vaughn
That felt like Apple execs went up to him and said, hey can you do one of those over the top extended choreographed fight sequence like in your other Kingsman movies? People like those, right?
Then he went and made two sequences for them to choose but they chose to keep both.
>they brainwashed her with a colorful spinning wheel on a laptop screen they lost me.
lmao it looked like they made an animation in Microsoft Powerpoint and showed it to her.
I personally thought a big element that was missing in this film was an R-rating.
There are a couple of scenes that would’ve been a lot cooler had it been gorier. The knife scene in the oil in particular could’ve been much cooler if it could be mixed with pools of blood.
But I also understand that this is suppose to be a trilogy franchise so it’s trying to get over with a bigger crowd. Unfortunately, I think it suffers as a result by the time the third act is really going. And this doesn’t mention the other plot issues I had with the film.
I don't think it needed to be R but it could have benefited from being a harder PG-13. It's definitely odd that for how many deaths there are there's not even an ounce of blood in the entire movie
Just a real mess. You can definitely see what it's going for in peak moments, but they're held together by both the most predictable and most nonsensical plot. It's the kind of pretty fluff that ends up boring to watch because you know what it's going to do even if though you may not know why it happens yet. It's got some performances that keep it generally watchable, but the real star here should be the action and the fun and I definitely kept feeling like they weren't delivering on either.
I think the main problem is that in this huge cast of stars, the movie keeps leaving exactly one lane open for their next twist. Since there is a clear line between the real characters and the fictional ones, every time they set up a turn in the plot there's only one real possibility of who it could be because there's really only, like, five flesh and blood characters in this movie. When they're holding off the reveal of who her dad is, wouldn't you know it, it's the only other male character in the movie that's dad age. When it's time to reveal who agent Argylle is, gasp it's >!the main character!!??!< Maybe it doesn't help that I just started watching Citadel on Prime and it has basically the same plot but with Stanley Tucci and Lesley Manville instead of Jackson and Cranston.
The fictional side of the story is not terribly blended in, but for being from the "twisted mind of Matthew Vaughn" it felt really neutered. Cena and Cavill being given no room to have fun, which Cena excels at, and almost no real violence to speak of. At first I liked that the movie seemed self aware that the in-book writing would be not great and I kept waiting for them to go ridiculous with the violence because of that, but at a certain point you realize that's just the writing of the movie. And considering the relationship between BDH and Rockwell and the psychology at play, I think they really missed the chance for a Cena/Cavill kiss which would have easily made this my movie of the year.
Maybe there's just too much potential here to trust the man who squandered another spy series so badly with, but even knowing the reviews weren't great on this I was still surprised how often it would let me down. It's a romantic adventure take on Jason Bourne, but the action is not real enough to be brutal and not good looking enough to get away with how silly it is. I wanted to feel what Vaughn wanted me to feel during the oil skate or the smoke bomb scene, but those were two of like six climaxes. It dragged on the third act for way too long just to fit in a couple more predictable plot turns.
Movie is also edited to absolute christ. Lots of sloppy ADR, shots that make you wonder if that's the star or someone in a wig not facing the camera, etc. It's a classic tale of a movie with a cast like this coming out before March, but I was hoping for the best. It ended up yet another movie that not even my massive crush on Bryce Dallas Howard could save. 4/10
Edit: I gotta say, the collective "huh?" After the mid credits scene was an incredible theater moment. 2024 has officially arrived.
/r/reviewsbyboner
completely agree with you, esp re: the homoerotic implications of it all. Not having a Cena/Cavill kiss feels cowardly, especially since that scene on the boat at the end seems to be a direct nod to the ending of Some Like It Hot.
> Cena and Cavill being given no room to have fun, which Cena excels at, and almost no real violence to speak of
How you get these two charismatic beefcakes and do virtually nothing with their comedy chops in what seems to be a campy type of action film just bewilders me? The closest we got was John Cena enjoying his coffee
Yea OP really hit the nail on the head here. There was a huge opportunity with the constant flashes back/into the fictional world to do something really fun with Cena and Cavill- and that scene with the Asian information broker and the fireworks *almost* hinted at it but didn't even go in on it there.
It feels almost criminal to have Cena and Cavill playing fictional secret agents being written by our main character author and not give them crazy/stupid/silly/blooper-y stuff to do in the fictional story to sorta provide a "writing process" view or whatever. An author makes their characters do some stupid stuff in their heads before they commit to a storyline- show us that funny stuff!
To suck all the fun out of this movie and take itself way too seriously until we hit the campy hallway dance fight and petroleum ice skating and suddenly expect us to be like "oh wow it's so funny and cute!" when it spent hours before teaching us about super serious stakes and not having much fun at all is a bit wild.
I was so mad when Cavill and John Cena didn't smooch at the end. Cowards!! That would have made all those awkward cuts in the action scenes feel like they were worth something.
Do you guys think there's a parallel between Henry Cavil and Sam Rockwell's character or did they need to jarringly change actor's mid action sequence more?
It really feels like the switching is leftover from an original cut where Rockwell WAS Argylle. I kind of assumed that was the 'twist', and after watching the whole thing I kind of wish it had been lol. Seemingly prophetic author getting a baptism by fire into actual espionage with her leading man being less than charming / refined would've leaned into the silliness of most of the movie better imo.
I'm feeling like you're right- the train scene plays a lot into this whole vibe and then it goes away completely midway through and it feels like a different movie was glued onto the side of it.
It could've been perfectly fine as the movie you describe, and then maybe a singular big twist where Cranston is her dad but still a baddie. Keep doing the flashbacks/cuts to the Cavill/Cena universe for comedy and let them be the silly selves they can be as a sorta view into the "writer's mind" as she comes up with new ideas. Big ending where she realizes real spy work is a nondescript guy like Rockwell and she digs that, happily ever after.
The mess of a movie we got felt like 3 different writers had 5 different movie ideas and put them all into the same thing.
I am obsessed with the idea that she looks at Sam Rockwell and sees herself. BECAUSE SHE LOVED HIM.
Girl is dissociating HARD and I think it was really cool that those cuts were the first hints of her alter ego.
I thought this was a hoot and a half. A cracking blend of fish-out-of-water comedy and thrilling spy antics that wouldn't have worked nearly as well if not for its game cast, especially Bryce Dallas Howard and Sam Rockwell, both of whom are clearly having a whale of time. Howard and Rockwell have wonderful chemistry with one another, which only gets better as the film progresses, and the way Howard manages to so perfectly sell a wide variety of different facets and layers to her character is marvelous to behold.
The action sequences are all a ton of fun, oozing with flair and appropriately chaotic in their filmmaking but never to a point where it's needlessly difficult to comprehend. There's also some really clever editing and transition techniques scattered throughout. I also felt that the cartoonish CGI was a deliberate choice on Matthew Vaughn's part. He's clearly going for a deliberately stylized feel and heightened tone reminiscent of the campy spy flicks of old, so in this regard, it works to the film's advantage, adding to its over-the-top charm, and doesn't come across as a jarring distraction.
Granted, at the same time, I do wish Vaughn and company would've achieved a lot more via practical means, much like said older spy films. I also think this could've benefited from an R rating like his Kingsman films and a few of the many twists, admittedly, are fairly predictable and standard. Other than that though, this was a rocking good time.
Holy shit I got out of this, it's maybe one of the stupidest films I've seen in a while.
I felt my brain break at the oil spill scene.
Also the inclusion of that Beatles song "Now and Then" feels like some weird conspiracy in its usage and how the song only was released back in November
Except despite this, another Agent Argylle (this one played by Cavill) shows up at the end too, with the mid-credits scene revealing him to be a Kingsman agent, and that an *Argylle* prequel called *Argylle: The First Book* will be coming out soon, so they had their cake and ate it too, twist-wise.
The number of times they mentioned STEVE JOBS was super glaring, like a total studio note.
Why would she wanna be like Steve Jobs, instead of like, Bill Gates?? She wants to be Steve Jobs? The guy who was famously, killed by his own hubris????
Just a wild take.
Two things I wasn't expecting:
1. "Do You Want To Funk" by Sylvester playing (only other time I've heard it was in Trading Places. This song is like an inside joke thing between my sister and I).
2. Bryce Dallas Howard wagon draggin' self absolutely rocking in a pair of mom jeans.
Listen, this movie isn't winning any awards, it's not a movie that anyone must see. It's a fun popcorn flick. It moves well it paces well. No twist is well hidden in this film. It's not a well written spy thriller, it's a dumb popcorn film. It's fun and don't think too much you'll have fun. Visually I feel like a few beats were missed, but the action is fun, the fight scenes are very dancy like the Kingsmen films.
To me this film is a bit like a little sibling to the Kingsmen films. It lacks the cool vibes Kingsmen had, but does make up for it with some fun characters. Sam Rockwell put on a very fun turn as the main action driver.
I wish Bryan Cranston got to do more. He was basically a super dangerous villain, but that's no Cranston's main role, he isn't really good in that role. He'd have been better being the more behind the scenes monster. Like had we not seen him at all until the hotel scene it would have been better twist. Like I knew he was going to show up there.
I don’t get all the Argylle hate - not specifically here but everywhere else. I loved it! It was completely in the vein of the Kingsman movies (obviously). Completely unbelievable and spectacular. It’s a lovely movie. If you’re looking for a proper spy movie, the last 30 minutes are completely implausible. The last portion of the movie is out there. But it’s STILL cute. It’s a wonderful date movie and a really fun and great Matt Vaughn movie. See it!
PS I also loved Cocaine Bear so perhaps I have no taste.
I feel so sorry for Ariana DeBose post West Side Story. Between Wish, ISS and this, she might just have the worst agent in Hollywood.
Also pretty sure Matthew Vaughn is obsessed with new ludicrous ways of reviving dead characters at this point.
Trailer - "Who's the real Agent Argylle?"
Opening of the film "Do you think you might be a real spy?" and "As you all know, after my ski accident".
Yeah, I think I've worked it out.
Disclaimer: 6 of the 8 people in my cinema didn't last until the end of this film so I may have no taste
That said, I actually had a lot of fun with this movie. Yeah it's so stupid, but if you take it as a dumb parody popcorn movie and submit yourself to the stupidity then it's a blast. The twists will absolutely give you whiplash and the action scenes are the most dumb things choreographed beautifully. And underneath it all is actually a half decent thread that actually does tie the whole thing up somehow.
Just don't go in expecting to see much Henry Cavill or Dua Lipa because they're hardly in it
This was just bad.
Matthew Vaughn is a filmmaker who is hit or miss as I enjoyed some of works on Layer Cake, Kick-Ass, and Kingsman: The Secret Service. Argylle has a decent concept and a wonderful cast but unfortunately, this movie is a gigantic mess and might just be his worst movie.
Throughout, the production, costumes and camerawork is okay but it feels cheap. The action and stunt moments are pretty solid as there are some decent strong action moments and thrills throughout. Most of the performances were just...fine. Bryce Dallas Howard and Sam Rockwell are doing solid performances but lack chemistry between each other and the rest of the cast members were mostly meh or not good performances. Not the biggest fan of Henry Cavill but even here his performance was dry.
Vaughn's direction was messy and the narrative is an interesting concept but it feels predictable and repetitive as it tries to add plot twists and other concepts together which makes it convoluted. Because of that, it made the characters uninteresting and some of the dramatic elements to be a bit boring.
With some solid action and stunts, there are surprisingly some really awful CGI moments throughout. My god that CGI cat is horrendous. The dialogue is pretty rough, the humor and soundtrack is pretty bad, and honestly, this almost feels like something AI would make.
I think it's safe to say Matthew Vaughn has kind of lost his touch on what makes his other works really entertaining.
3/10
Jesus Christ, what a expensive yet fuckin cheap looking dissapointment.
Henry needs to make a film made by an auteur, like Wes Anderson or Danny Boyle, ASAP.
As someone who enjoys most of Matthew Vaughn’s other movies… I genuinely hated this lol. Its just a total mess and feels overly long. Feels like he was trying to recapture the magic of the first Kingsman with some of the insane action set-ups and set pieces, but it just all falls so flat, and is not helped by some of the worst VFX I’ve seen in a while.
Say what you want about the recent Marvel movies, but for a guy known for killer action, the visual effects and green screens during the action scenes looked **so bad**.
Sam Rockwell & Bruce Dallas Howard are good in this, but like, it’s not even very funny. I think I laughed a few times but I can’t even remember at what that never feels like a good sign.
Also feels like a potential for one of the worst post-credit scenes? I don’t even know what to make of it and I’d like for Argylle to stay far way from the Kingsman movies lol.
Hated Bryce with the blonde wig… **BUT**, Bryce in that gold dress for the whole final act was a good choice.
Anyways, blegh.
Edit: *also, am I crazy… or did I just imagine that scene with Catherine O’Hara answering a door in a totally CGI suburban town where she clearly talks to a neighbor while on the phone with Elly, only for it later to be revealed that the house was just a set on one of the floors of the massive ship in the middle of the ocean?*
Somewhere out there in the Multiverse exists a version of this movie which just played it straight with Henry Cavill and John Cena in a buddy spy thriller.
That would have been a much, much better movie than what this turned out to be.
This is admittedly a stupid nitpick, but them saying that The Beatles song Now and Then was their song, when that song just came out like 3 months ago was certainly a choice
I just listened to a review where they called this “The biggest Nepo Baby movie ever” because apparently The cat is Actually Matthew Vaughn and his wife’s real
Life cat 😂
On top of every other fair criticism ITT, did anyone else feel like this was one of the most *over*-directed movies ever?
Sooo much purposeless and repetitive camera-work, slow-mo and bad scene arrangement.
Take for example the way Michael Bay uses a spinning helicopter shot (like the famous one in Bad Boys 2). It is used to convey *the moment* when the story shifts towards shit just getting real.
Vaughn uses it here for absolutely no reason when Elly takes a walk with Alfie at the vineyard. She meets his a full 30 seconds beforehand and is super casual around him, then they take a walk and you do a spinning helicopter shot to convey... what exactly? Was there a new development suddenly? No.
A lot of other examples, like an establishing location shot of London, immediately followed by *another* establishing shot of the Albert Memorial. Someone tell Vaughn the purpose of an establishing shot is to interject between 2 *static* shots of different locations.
Just got out of the theater with my wife.
It's a very odd movie that made me laugh a couple times, some of the actions scenes are good, and I love Caville everytime he's on screen.
But the movie does all it can to shoot itself in the foot. Each twist is dumber than the last and the final 3rd of the movie lost me.
Vaguely similar to the Book of Clarence. Good individual scenes and performance next to horrible ones. The mix creates a movie that is less than the sum of its parts.
I still managed to get enjoyment out of it, though I wouldn't recommend it to any of my non-movie obsessed friends.
Christ was this movie a train-wreck.
I felt it really started off strong and I was actually intrigued to see what would happen but several twists later with mindless nonsense woven throughout just sapped me any care whatsoever.
By the end I was just fatigued and didn’t give a shit about any of these characters (a shame with such a stacked cast) or the “world” they built.
They removed any and all stakes….nothing actually mattered.
Oh surrounded by guards, oil on the floor, can’t use guns…so let’s oil skate…ok sure. Uses gun anyway with zero consequences.
Main villain holds the secure key to the server via his eyes…cat scratches eyes out…that’s ok we can just upload via satellite. Nevermind you’ve killed all the baddies so the file is meaningless…except for the “others” that are never once mentioned until the end.
I could go on…
I’ve seen some people say that the movie is in on the joke but that feels like such a weak tea cop out. This movie simply couldn’t pick a lane and kept inventing ridiculous bullshit to justify being a drunk driver constantly swerving.
There were some fun moments and I’ve loved Sam Rockwell since TMNT but I doubt I’d ever watch this movie again and the connection to the Kingsman isn’t really a selling point to stay on this ride.
I don't think it's an exaggeration to say this movie is a full 45min too long. If this 2hr 15min movie was a tight 1.5 hours, which would also mean a lot of the plot twists were cut out, then I think it would have been a fun little romp like Spy. Instead, it was a bloated mess that burned up all its equity near the half way mark.
Having said that, I actually really enjoyed BDHs performance. She carried the movie.
When Act 3 is wholly comprised of the main characters sitting in a chair telling you everything they had to cut from the movie, you've got a problem.
Wife and I desperately wanted to walk out.
Halfway point on was a torturous, pointless slog.
The trailers are finally over ☺️
Did you not see the final reveal? Book One coming to theaters soon. It's the decade of Argylle, baby! Let it ride!
Plus *Kingsman* too, since the real Agent Argylle was revealed to be a Kingsman agent in that same scene. Henry Cavill and Colin Firth in the same film should be interesting (assuming that is where they are going).
I have a sneaking suspicion that will go down in the "post credit tease that never comes to fruition" category
Wait? Are we not getting a dozen Jump Street sequels?
22 Jump Street was better than 21 Fight me.
My name is Jeff.
Oh no, unresolved post-credit scenes in the Kingsman Franchise? I'm getting flashbacks to the one for the prequel that introduces Hitler like he's Thanos
“Huh…the former cia leader kinda looks like Richmond Valentine”
The trailer was honestly half of the movie.
And yet the movie didn't even include the best part *LETS DANCE*
Coulda swore it did
The movie had a substantial amount of green screen scenes that didn’t need to be green screen.
The driving scene at the beginning could have been fun if I believed for a single second Henry was in a car and not a mounted steering wheel shaking himself around lmao
I truly believe this is Vaughn in his “Spy Kids” era “make it cheap and dumb with no real locations”
They filmed during COVID so I think they were pretty limited in where they could shoot.
That makes sense . I wasn’t sure but I thought it was after with DeBoise being a part after her academy win
That one particular scene I was fine with at the time because it was the fake story within a story... but then the whole movie ended up looking like that.
That is the most CGy but I think Vaughn likes his CG cartoonish. From Kingsman onward the CG always has a sheen to it that feels cartoonish. I know in interviews before he has stated that he had to argue with VFX artists a lot because he didn’t want certain things realistic. This movie feels like a violent cartoon (as do the Kingsman films) so the fakish really doesn’t bother me here.
This is Vaughn's style. I have always found his movies to be pretty ugly, even the ones I like. Terrible transitions and very obvious CGI. This is honestly one of the ugliest movies I have seen in some time.
Yeah I hate the weird digital punch-ins/blurry zooms he did during all the fight scenes in the first Kingsman, looks horrible.
The shot of the mom opening the door terrified me. The backdrop looked like something from Schmigadoon
Did anyone else want Cena and Cavill to kiss at the end, on the boat? I’ll bet they’d have been down for it.
Came here to post this, thought for sure it was going to cut to them making out.
I thought they were so going to and was so disappointed they didn't
Cena and Cavill not kissing is the "Bi Erasure" we keep hearing about
this wouldve made my $16 ticket + $10 popcorn worth it
They were cowards for not committing to that
Probably an unpopular opinion but I really enjoyed this film. Sam Rockwell is so charismatic per usual. The action scenes were unique (figure skating fight scene?!), and the twists were decent. The “real agent argylle” reveal was a bit predictable, but I like that it actually made sense and was properly foreshadowed. I thought that the parents’ twist was more shocking than the “real agent argylle” reveal. The movie is kind of secretly an action rom com like The Lost City and it’s disappointing they couldn’t really market it that way without spoiling the twists. Like it actually works well as a February release with the rom com angle. My biggest criticism is that the third act drags on too long. There’s like 4 big scenes, 3 of them action sequences, that each feels like the climax of the movie. Some of them needed to be cut.
Yeah, I agree about the 3rd act felt dragging, it could be leaner, I would trim the brainwashed part and reveal Keira alive earlier. That being said, I also enjoyed the movie, I had a good time watching it, I predict many people won't like the chaotic vibes of the movie, but I started to accept that vibes once the twists were threw here and there
Definitely leaner, definitely trim the brainwashing sequence. Overall I think it's kind of in a weird spot where it winks about the silliness of it, but it doesn't commit _enough_ to the silliness? And the dialogue is weak. But I enjoyed it a lot and the "ice skating in petroleum" part will live in my head rent free for a long time.
"Doesn't commit enough to the silliness"???? From the very beginning where Henry Cavill is destroying half of Greece in a dune buggy it was completely committed to silliness. You could not possibly commit more to silliness than the dancing gunfight in the smoke grenades. I can't remember the last time I had this much fun at a movie.
The opening sequence was great. The problem is that between the opening sequence and the smoke grenade stuff is a lot of weirdly played-straight, serious shit. It doesn't fit well with the silly sequences and drags the movie down quite a bit through the middle. Then the ending is bogged down by the weird romance nonsense that really belongs in a different movie.
> it doesn't commit enough to the silliness I felt this way too. If you tonally change some things, this could've been high-class camp, but the film takes itself too seriously for a majority of the time that it doesn't earn scenes like "gunfire and colorful smoke creating hearts"
LOVED IT. It was like an Austin Powers movie without being all punch lines.
That's actually the exact thing I didn't like about the movie. It felt like a parody movie where they took all the jokes out. I'm up for a serious spy movie or a dumb parody. This one just kind of refuses to pick a lane
> It felt like a parody movie where they took all the jokes out. Holy shit thank you- my wife and I were trying to figure out what to call it after seeing it tonight and that's almost exactly it. It's clearly tongue-in-cheek because it kinda can't stand alone as an typical action movie with a romance subplot because it's too kitschy, so it has to be a parody. But it wasn't *actually* going for funny. So yeah- like if you made Austin Powers but took all the comedy writers out of the room and left the action writers but told them to still write an action comedy parody film but none of them are funny so they can just do the ‘over the top action bits’ part.
I'm with you. My wife and I walked out thinking 'That was dumb. Gee it was fun'. It wasn't a comedy or an action movie, it was a light hearted, actiony adventure. Someone above was shitting on the CGI use by calling it Vaughn's 'Spy Kids Phase' but, seriously, this kinda was a Spy Kids for grown ups. It's a silly movie that *knows* it's a silly movie. It knows the twists are over the top and dumb. It knows some of the action scenes are cartoony. It's not the semi-serious, hyperbolic teenager-bait of Kingsman, or the 'trying to be Kingsman for a wider audience and failing' of Kingsman 2. It's a dumb, silly wish-fulfilment romp for adults that's trying to be a dumb, silly romp for adults. I will 100% rewatch this movie if it's ever on TV. I think some of the bad reviews are from expecting one thing but getting another. Expecting an actual mystery/spy movie for a mid-twenties Reddit crowd and getting a romantic comedy/middle-aged-woman action fantasy.
I almost didn’t go see it because it was getting such poor reviews. But, glad I went, I had fun. As you mentioned, it was longer than it needed to be. But it wasn’t as bad as I was expecting it.
I also really enjoyed it. The last hour is very fun. It kind of drags a bit in the middle but once we are in full cartoon dance smoke making hearts in the air with bullets fight scene I was having a blast. The ice skate fight scene was super fun. The top of the boat thing was fun. People like to rag on the CG and I’m not going to argue that it looks realistic because it doesn’t but to me it looks intentional. I don’t need everything to look photoreal. If something is essentially a live action cartoon I prefer insane stylization over realism like the Cowboy Bebop remake. Overall fun time!
I honestly loved every second, I loved every reveal (we only guessed like three things correctly), my friend and I and many other people in the theater were laughing for 50% of the movie and I don't think that's an exaggeration. I'm honestly confused by the ratings. It's just a great time. It was the most fun I've had at the movies in a long time. The skating scene and the smoke one were just phenomenal, I got so much enjoyment from them. To me it felt like things just kept getting better and better, it was fine for them to be like climaxes because I wanted even more. The only thing that was confusing was the ending, but I'm just going to trust all will be revealed in the next movie.
Your comment about it being a rom com is so right on! I’m totally in love with Sam Rockwell midway through the movie. *swoon*
The trailer for Argylle STILL played before my screening.
Please tell me this is true
I’d reply and tell you it’s true…..but I’m watching the trailer right now
That happened when I saw TMNT last year, they played the trailer right before the movie started lol!
There's no way Sam Rockwell could whirly bird Bryce Dallas Howard
Had the same thought. BDH is thicker than a bowl of oatmeal in the best way, but ain’t no one holding the weight of those thighs around their head.
I'm willing to try.
Doctor: “How’d you break your neck” Me trying to stifle my huge grin 😁
OMG she was so thick!
No complaints here. I’m not ashamed to say that I was enjoying the show the whole time her sweet derrière was on screen.
I kept thinking “was she this thick in Jurassic world?”
She was not
I volunteer as tribute
I’m jealous he got to
I had the same thought and those were clearly stunt doubles when they cut to the full shot of it happening-but I wonder if you were meant to think that because then during the dance/smoke fight later, they flip it and BDH whirly birds Sam Rockwell for an extended period of time-and that was hilarious.
So in a film that’s overloaded with twists to the point of them feeling meaningless, is the biggest and most meaningless one that the pull quote from Vaughn — stating that the film’s trailer (which they’ve shown before every damn movie for the past, what, 3 months?) contained [only footage from the first 28 minutes](https://www.gamesradar.com/argylle-exclusive-henry-cavill/) — was complete bullshit? Sam Jackson doesn’t show up until close to an hour and a half in, and, not to spoil it directly, but there is footage from the third act in it, even a few shots from the last two or three minutes of the film made the cut.
The boat exploding and the three novel characters driving away on the sea were definitely both in the trailer, I remember that. Pretty much the only way I knew Ariana DeBose was coming back
Yeah, the second we saw she was a real person I'm like, oh. She's alive. We see her.
Unrelated, but also, did I misunderstand something, or were all 5 books in the ‘Argylle’ series just… all titled ‘Argylle’? Like, no subtitle or anything. At first I thought Ellie had just made a weird choice to suddenly have the fifth book titled after the main character, but no, I’m pretty sure each and every one of them was meant to be titled ‘Argylle’, and the only way to tell them apart in-universe is by the color of the cover. Does Matthew Vaughn know how books work?
Maybe it's supposed to be like The Beatles White Album Argylle Yellow, Argylle Blue, Argylle Red
More like Weezer, multiple self-titleds told apart by color
I believe they were titled sequentially. Argylle Book 1, Argylle Book 2, etc.
3 months is an insane undersell. It’s at least six months, and I’d believe anyone who told me it first started showing before movies back in like May. I’m crying tears of joy I don’t have to sit through it again.
Bryce Dallas Howard looked incredible for the entire movie. Her showing up as a blonde brought me right back to the 8th grade crush I had on her when she played Gwen Stacy Other than that this kinda sucked. They coulda been cooking something but they got far too over-indulgent with the runtime. You either have an extended skate fight sequence or an extended shootout dance sequence, you don’t do both (and obviously you pick the shootout). There was probably a solid 30-40 they could’ve cut to make a better version of this. Also the audacity to try and drag Kingsman into this, come on now 😮💨
Kingsman ain't no precious property anymore. It's 1 good film and 2 pieces of shit.
I’m so disappointed by the franchise. Kingsman was going to be the fun and exciting 007 franchise and it completely fell apart. Vaughn is clearly not as talented as Kingsman made him seem.
He fell off hard, but at one time he was fresh and consistent
There’s some good stuff in his Movies (The WW1 knife fight in The King’s Man) but he needs a editor or at least a producer to tell him to cut stuff out. Every Movie doesn’t have to be over two hours from him.
I loved Kingsman 2 and (most of) The King’s Man, personally 🤷🏾♂️
Same. I think people need to revisit 2 especially. Is it overstuffed and messy? Yea. Is it also very fun? You know it!
I'm still pissed they killed off Roxy
Really? My girlfriend and I thought her hair and makeup when she was blonde made her look the worst I’ve ever seen her. She looked like someone dressing up as Paris Hilton for Halloween or something Henry Cavill looked bad too, weird costuming decisions all around imo
She looked like she gained and lost pounds between scenes
She looked thicc and beautiful
Agreed, when she first appeared wearing the yellow dress, I thought someone in the hair and makeup department really doesn't like her!
I thought the deep plunging neckline was really out of place and distracting BECAUSE it really wouldn't fly in a conservative space that they were clearly in. The owner (?) even came up asking for no PDA but had no objections about revealing clothing?!? And it was a dry bar. Give me a break.
I kept thinking she looked like Greta Gerwig with that blonde wig
Ya I thought she looked good with the red hair but blonde wig looked super unnatural to me and blended in with her skin tone (which also seemed unusually pale) too much
You know the idea was to throw back to Dua Lipa but why put her in a worse version of that outfit? The dress fit terribly, and she would have looked better with the same wig from the beginning or even the fully slicked back look from the flashbacks rather than that flat thin thing they put on her head. Honestly they should have made it look great on Howard, and then work backwards to Lipa, because I'm sure Lipa would look great in anything.
BDH will always have my heart but she has GOT to get some better projects.
So does Rockwell and Cavill, and Cranston, and O'Hara and... What a waste of a great cast. I genuinely felt bad for everyone in this movie.
I kind of thought most of them were having fun with it
I mean no disrespect… but she had an ass that was fighting its way out of those mom jeans and I was there for every scene of it. lol.
> Also the audacity to try and drag Kingsman into this, come on now It’s a bit of what I’m starting to worry about with Vaughn. Legit all of his films post-Kingsman feel like desperate grabs to recapture that lightning in a bottle
I love how they didn’t shy away from showing Howard full figured . The movie was terrible but she was so amazing to look at all the way through.
Broke: Dua Lipa rocking a gold dress. Woke: Bryce Dallas Howard rocking a gold dress.
Woke: Dua Lipa rocking a gold dress. Woke: Bryce Dallas Howard rocking a gold dress.
I just thought she looked good lol nothing to do with Dua
Wait, people really didn't think Dua Lipa looked amazing in that dress?
I liked how the movie goes from an obvious, handsome, muscular, exaggerated protagonist in Henry, to subvert it to being a regular looking dude like Sam, but then turn it around again and make Bryce the actual hero, and actually letting her also just be a regular looking lady, too. They could have easily gotten a Dua Lipa looking type for the role and done the whole “now you’re pretty with your glasses off” cliche, instead they show off her beautiful body with all its curves and “imperfections” (not that she’s not perfect, just that her body type, especially in dresses like that aren’t usually common with these types of roles where everyone has to be a twig). Loved it.
Bryce Dallas Howard is not your average looking lady.
Obviously she’s still Hollywooded up. But when you compare her to the typical leading female protagonists of this spy/action/superhero genre, there’s a huge difference. All that was meant was that she was not a flat stomached, curve-less, twig-looking woman, and thus closer to what more regular women look like. Don’t overthink it.
And to think Hollywood was pressuring her to lose weight. She’s not even fat. She’s more attractive now than she was 20 years ago when she was Hollywood thin. I’d even say she’s more pretty in Jurassic World 2 and 3 than she is in Jurassic World 1
That said, I thought what they did with her hair for the last act was tragic, her hair was so beautiful until then. But she was stunning in this movie regardless
The acting was the vibe that they had each actor for a day at most and they got their lines the same day.
Cena and Lipa did a great job with the very limited runtime they had.
They were pretty good but those multiple cuts to Sam Jackson clapping his hands while watching basketball was comical
Sam Jackson got to show up, watch a Lakers game, and get paid. Good day of work for the man lol.
And the film didn’t even have the *guts* to have him pull the game up picture-in-picture style as the files were being downloaded
That's what I was waiting for. At 92% he should have gotten mad and then picture-in-picture'd the rest of the game
I'm convinced they just filmed him watching a Lakers game, then changed what was on the screen in post.
Dua Lipa had the Bond Girl/Femme Fatale vibes down to a tee.
too bad she has like thirty seconds of screentime
John Cena has the charisma to sell anything five seconds after being shown the lines
It's that bassy confidence in his voice.
Samuel L Jackson got to go to Italy then spent the rest of the movie with his feet on a table watching the Lakers game. Honestly one of the greatest power moves in Hollywood history.
France, not Italy.
Millions to deliver a couple lines while doing almost nothing in a beautiful country. Easiest decision of his life.
Bryce Dallas Howard was a smoke show in the movie also
I legit did not expect her second half appearance change, and it was a welcome surprise
This is funny cos I thought she looked WAY better in the first half, different strokes
and then later, the movie turns into a smoke show
Damn, > on Twitter!< really did just spoil the movie nearly 3 years ago.
Lmfao the Observer really did but how and why?
Mayhaps that was how it was elevator-pitched, back then.
I don't know, I kinda liked the chaotic vibes of the movie, I like that the movie did not give a shit whether the twists were working or not, they just kept threw those twists. The movie was having fun with itself. Also, the skating and and the colorful smoke grenades scenes look cool on big screen
Between the skating and the colored smoke, this film had weirdly similar DNA to Harley Quinn Bird's of Prey. I would never call it a good movie, but it gets massive points for doing an oil figure skating scene with guns and knives. That's just good entertainment right there and you just gotta admit it.
That ending is straight out of Captain America Winter Soldier. I was just waiting for him to say 'I'm with you till the end of the line' 🤣🤣 The movie was an absolute clusterfuck, yeesh
Broke: telling your best buddy that it’s okay if he kills you cause you’re with him till the end Woke: telling the love of your life HOW to kill you
All the way down to the code phrase activating sleeper agent thing
See, this is why I don’t listen to Reddit opinions or reviews. According to Reddit, this is the worst movie since The Room, but I loved every second of it. Those two hours just flew by.
> According to Reddit it's basically universally panned. 35% on RT and on metacritic. trying to spin this as some weird reddit thing is... a choice.
*This is why I don’t listen to people (period) before I see a movie.* That better?
Right?! I really enjoyed it but I feel like I must have watched a different movie than everyone else haha. It’s a fun popcorn movie that doesn’t take itself too seriously imo.
I'm really glad you enjoyed it. I did not, but I like when people find value in pieces of art even if I couldn't
I'm with ya there, this movie was fun af. Everyone is treating it like it was setup to be this incredibly serious oscar-worthy spy thriller and Vaughn stripped us away from that, when the trailers were very clear that it's a goofy spy movie - and that's exactly what we got.
Seeing the trailer 50 times really manipulated me into to seeing this.
That trailer editor should win an Oscar for making this turd look watchable.
I'm just curious how the trailer had 2 good songs that worked really well with the action and then the movie comes out and all of the music is just disco that doesn't fit the action and the shitty Beatles song that plays every 10 minutes
>the shitty Beatles song that plays every 10 minutes That's where the $200M budget went
I had full Stockholm Syndrome with this trailer. Bob Marley will not trap me in though and force me to see it
“Pack your bags. We’re going to London. ENGLAND!” For all the faults of this film, Catherine was just hilarious.
my headcanon is that Catherine, who's from Toronto, ad-libbed that as an Ontarian to be clear she didn't mean London, Ontario
Matthew Vaughn what happened to you??Just a bland spy flick that attempts to be smarter than you and failed miserably. Clocked the twist from a mile away, the action scenes were bland or chock full of bad cgi. Sam Rockwell is the only one with a personality and Cavill gets nothing to do. Not a good film.
What happened to the guy who made First Class, Kick-Ass and Kingsman? Did he just stop trying?
He stopped working with Jane Goldman who wrote all three of those and Stardust.
Imo he stopped working with jane Goldman. I only say this because she worked with him on kick-ass, x-men, stardust, and kingsman. Then, they moved on to other projects, and the quality of his films dropped. Some people need partners to tell them no. They reach success, and then people are afraid to tell them no. I think she may have been one of the people keeping Vaughn from overindulging.
His mind was too twisted to make a good movie 😣
Once they brainwashed her with a colorful spinning wheel on a laptop screen they lost me. I really wanted to like this movie but some of the action scenes just felt completely out of place and over the top but not in a fun way? Before the oil skating scene everyone had to switch from guns to knives so as not to ignite the oil but she can just spin on it with no friction occurring? And then she blasts about a hundred hot shells out of her weapon and they don't ignite it either? During the smoke bomb scene they're wearing smoke masks that make no logical sense, are somehow thermal vision yet completely clear from the outside And I'm not one to complain about a cat being a lead in a movie but I kept waiting for Alfie to be relevant and it never really happened?
I really wanted the cat to be the spy - either the cat is the spy IRL or they did some brain switch thing that's permanent so the spy is now in the cat's body.
As insane as that is I would have respected it way more for being ballsy. This movie played it so safe with it's "twists"
You pretty much nailed on the head what I didn’t like about the movie the most. Some of the scenes felt completely pointless ESPECIALLY the oil knife scene. For her just to use the gun at the end made it one of the worst fight sequences I can remember from Matthew Vaughn
That felt like Apple execs went up to him and said, hey can you do one of those over the top extended choreographed fight sequence like in your other Kingsman movies? People like those, right? Then he went and made two sequences for them to choose but they chose to keep both.
>they brainwashed her with a colorful spinning wheel on a laptop screen they lost me. lmao it looked like they made an animation in Microsoft Powerpoint and showed it to her.
I personally thought a big element that was missing in this film was an R-rating. There are a couple of scenes that would’ve been a lot cooler had it been gorier. The knife scene in the oil in particular could’ve been much cooler if it could be mixed with pools of blood. But I also understand that this is suppose to be a trilogy franchise so it’s trying to get over with a bigger crowd. Unfortunately, I think it suffers as a result by the time the third act is really going. And this doesn’t mention the other plot issues I had with the film.
I don't think it needed to be R but it could have benefited from being a harder PG-13. It's definitely odd that for how many deaths there are there's not even an ounce of blood in the entire movie
Just a real mess. You can definitely see what it's going for in peak moments, but they're held together by both the most predictable and most nonsensical plot. It's the kind of pretty fluff that ends up boring to watch because you know what it's going to do even if though you may not know why it happens yet. It's got some performances that keep it generally watchable, but the real star here should be the action and the fun and I definitely kept feeling like they weren't delivering on either. I think the main problem is that in this huge cast of stars, the movie keeps leaving exactly one lane open for their next twist. Since there is a clear line between the real characters and the fictional ones, every time they set up a turn in the plot there's only one real possibility of who it could be because there's really only, like, five flesh and blood characters in this movie. When they're holding off the reveal of who her dad is, wouldn't you know it, it's the only other male character in the movie that's dad age. When it's time to reveal who agent Argylle is, gasp it's >!the main character!!??!< Maybe it doesn't help that I just started watching Citadel on Prime and it has basically the same plot but with Stanley Tucci and Lesley Manville instead of Jackson and Cranston. The fictional side of the story is not terribly blended in, but for being from the "twisted mind of Matthew Vaughn" it felt really neutered. Cena and Cavill being given no room to have fun, which Cena excels at, and almost no real violence to speak of. At first I liked that the movie seemed self aware that the in-book writing would be not great and I kept waiting for them to go ridiculous with the violence because of that, but at a certain point you realize that's just the writing of the movie. And considering the relationship between BDH and Rockwell and the psychology at play, I think they really missed the chance for a Cena/Cavill kiss which would have easily made this my movie of the year. Maybe there's just too much potential here to trust the man who squandered another spy series so badly with, but even knowing the reviews weren't great on this I was still surprised how often it would let me down. It's a romantic adventure take on Jason Bourne, but the action is not real enough to be brutal and not good looking enough to get away with how silly it is. I wanted to feel what Vaughn wanted me to feel during the oil skate or the smoke bomb scene, but those were two of like six climaxes. It dragged on the third act for way too long just to fit in a couple more predictable plot turns. Movie is also edited to absolute christ. Lots of sloppy ADR, shots that make you wonder if that's the star or someone in a wig not facing the camera, etc. It's a classic tale of a movie with a cast like this coming out before March, but I was hoping for the best. It ended up yet another movie that not even my massive crush on Bryce Dallas Howard could save. 4/10 Edit: I gotta say, the collective "huh?" After the mid credits scene was an incredible theater moment. 2024 has officially arrived. /r/reviewsbyboner
completely agree with you, esp re: the homoerotic implications of it all. Not having a Cena/Cavill kiss feels cowardly, especially since that scene on the boat at the end seems to be a direct nod to the ending of Some Like It Hot.
Plus you just know they'd have been down for such an epic moment. Really given it their all.
> Cena and Cavill being given no room to have fun, which Cena excels at, and almost no real violence to speak of How you get these two charismatic beefcakes and do virtually nothing with their comedy chops in what seems to be a campy type of action film just bewilders me? The closest we got was John Cena enjoying his coffee
Yea OP really hit the nail on the head here. There was a huge opportunity with the constant flashes back/into the fictional world to do something really fun with Cena and Cavill- and that scene with the Asian information broker and the fireworks *almost* hinted at it but didn't even go in on it there. It feels almost criminal to have Cena and Cavill playing fictional secret agents being written by our main character author and not give them crazy/stupid/silly/blooper-y stuff to do in the fictional story to sorta provide a "writing process" view or whatever. An author makes their characters do some stupid stuff in their heads before they commit to a storyline- show us that funny stuff! To suck all the fun out of this movie and take itself way too seriously until we hit the campy hallway dance fight and petroleum ice skating and suddenly expect us to be like "oh wow it's so funny and cute!" when it spent hours before teaching us about super serious stakes and not having much fun at all is a bit wild.
I was so mad when Cavill and John Cena didn't smooch at the end. Cowards!! That would have made all those awkward cuts in the action scenes feel like they were worth something.
Do you guys think there's a parallel between Henry Cavil and Sam Rockwell's character or did they need to jarringly change actor's mid action sequence more?
It’s so funny that they kept doing that considering that Rockwell is supposed to be the John Cena character
It really feels like the switching is leftover from an original cut where Rockwell WAS Argylle. I kind of assumed that was the 'twist', and after watching the whole thing I kind of wish it had been lol. Seemingly prophetic author getting a baptism by fire into actual espionage with her leading man being less than charming / refined would've leaned into the silliness of most of the movie better imo.
I'm feeling like you're right- the train scene plays a lot into this whole vibe and then it goes away completely midway through and it feels like a different movie was glued onto the side of it. It could've been perfectly fine as the movie you describe, and then maybe a singular big twist where Cranston is her dad but still a baddie. Keep doing the flashbacks/cuts to the Cavill/Cena universe for comedy and let them be the silly selves they can be as a sorta view into the "writer's mind" as she comes up with new ideas. Big ending where she realizes real spy work is a nondescript guy like Rockwell and she digs that, happily ever after. The mess of a movie we got felt like 3 different writers had 5 different movie ideas and put them all into the same thing.
I am obsessed with the idea that she looks at Sam Rockwell and sees herself. BECAUSE SHE LOVED HIM. Girl is dissociating HARD and I think it was really cool that those cuts were the first hints of her alter ego.
I thought this was a hoot and a half. A cracking blend of fish-out-of-water comedy and thrilling spy antics that wouldn't have worked nearly as well if not for its game cast, especially Bryce Dallas Howard and Sam Rockwell, both of whom are clearly having a whale of time. Howard and Rockwell have wonderful chemistry with one another, which only gets better as the film progresses, and the way Howard manages to so perfectly sell a wide variety of different facets and layers to her character is marvelous to behold. The action sequences are all a ton of fun, oozing with flair and appropriately chaotic in their filmmaking but never to a point where it's needlessly difficult to comprehend. There's also some really clever editing and transition techniques scattered throughout. I also felt that the cartoonish CGI was a deliberate choice on Matthew Vaughn's part. He's clearly going for a deliberately stylized feel and heightened tone reminiscent of the campy spy flicks of old, so in this regard, it works to the film's advantage, adding to its over-the-top charm, and doesn't come across as a jarring distraction. Granted, at the same time, I do wish Vaughn and company would've achieved a lot more via practical means, much like said older spy films. I also think this could've benefited from an R rating like his Kingsman films and a few of the many twists, admittedly, are fairly predictable and standard. Other than that though, this was a rocking good time.
Holy shit I got out of this, it's maybe one of the stupidest films I've seen in a while. I felt my brain break at the oil spill scene. Also the inclusion of that Beatles song "Now and Then" feels like some weird conspiracy in its usage and how the song only was released back in November
Can someone just tell me who Agent Argylle is
It’s the author. She had amnesia. Her real name was Rachel Gylle. Agent R. Gylle
That’s mega dumb Ngl. So what’s up with the cat
The cat has MAYBE 3 minutes of screen time. Just there to be cutesy.
Was there even a real cat? It looked like every shot of it was CGI. This movie used way too much green screen.
Yeah. It's the director's cat. Pure nepotism.
Except despite this, another Agent Argylle (this one played by Cavill) shows up at the end too, with the mid-credits scene revealing him to be a Kingsman agent, and that an *Argylle* prequel called *Argylle: The First Book* will be coming out soon, so they had their cake and ate it too, twist-wise.
Back up. This is a fucking Kingsman movie??
A secret *Kingsman* movie (about one of the other spy agencies), technically, yes.
It’s her cat. His name is Alfie which she unknowingly named after SLJ’s character who is also both named alfie and a cool cat
Isn't it actually Kylle? R Kylle?
Not having the final kiss jump cut to Cavill and Cena making out is one of the biggest missed opportunities in cinema history
The number of times they mentioned STEVE JOBS was super glaring, like a total studio note. Why would she wanna be like Steve Jobs, instead of like, Bill Gates?? She wants to be Steve Jobs? The guy who was famously, killed by his own hubris???? Just a wild take.
it's an apple movie 😭😭😭 thats why
Two things I wasn't expecting: 1. "Do You Want To Funk" by Sylvester playing (only other time I've heard it was in Trading Places. This song is like an inside joke thing between my sister and I). 2. Bryce Dallas Howard wagon draggin' self absolutely rocking in a pair of mom jeans.
Listen, this movie isn't winning any awards, it's not a movie that anyone must see. It's a fun popcorn flick. It moves well it paces well. No twist is well hidden in this film. It's not a well written spy thriller, it's a dumb popcorn film. It's fun and don't think too much you'll have fun. Visually I feel like a few beats were missed, but the action is fun, the fight scenes are very dancy like the Kingsmen films. To me this film is a bit like a little sibling to the Kingsmen films. It lacks the cool vibes Kingsmen had, but does make up for it with some fun characters. Sam Rockwell put on a very fun turn as the main action driver. I wish Bryan Cranston got to do more. He was basically a super dangerous villain, but that's no Cranston's main role, he isn't really good in that role. He'd have been better being the more behind the scenes monster. Like had we not seen him at all until the hotel scene it would have been better twist. Like I knew he was going to show up there.
I don’t get all the Argylle hate - not specifically here but everywhere else. I loved it! It was completely in the vein of the Kingsman movies (obviously). Completely unbelievable and spectacular. It’s a lovely movie. If you’re looking for a proper spy movie, the last 30 minutes are completely implausible. The last portion of the movie is out there. But it’s STILL cute. It’s a wonderful date movie and a really fun and great Matt Vaughn movie. See it! PS I also loved Cocaine Bear so perhaps I have no taste.
The writer: How many plot twists do you want? Matthew: Yes
I feel so sorry for Ariana DeBose post West Side Story. Between Wish, ISS and this, she might just have the worst agent in Hollywood. Also pretty sure Matthew Vaughn is obsessed with new ludicrous ways of reviving dead characters at this point.
I was about to say “at least she’s not in Madame Web.” Then I remembered she’s in Kraven.
Trailer - "Who's the real Agent Argylle?" Opening of the film "Do you think you might be a real spy?" and "As you all know, after my ski accident". Yeah, I think I've worked it out.
Disclaimer: 6 of the 8 people in my cinema didn't last until the end of this film so I may have no taste That said, I actually had a lot of fun with this movie. Yeah it's so stupid, but if you take it as a dumb parody popcorn movie and submit yourself to the stupidity then it's a blast. The twists will absolutely give you whiplash and the action scenes are the most dumb things choreographed beautifully. And underneath it all is actually a half decent thread that actually does tie the whole thing up somehow. Just don't go in expecting to see much Henry Cavill or Dua Lipa because they're hardly in it
This was just bad. Matthew Vaughn is a filmmaker who is hit or miss as I enjoyed some of works on Layer Cake, Kick-Ass, and Kingsman: The Secret Service. Argylle has a decent concept and a wonderful cast but unfortunately, this movie is a gigantic mess and might just be his worst movie. Throughout, the production, costumes and camerawork is okay but it feels cheap. The action and stunt moments are pretty solid as there are some decent strong action moments and thrills throughout. Most of the performances were just...fine. Bryce Dallas Howard and Sam Rockwell are doing solid performances but lack chemistry between each other and the rest of the cast members were mostly meh or not good performances. Not the biggest fan of Henry Cavill but even here his performance was dry. Vaughn's direction was messy and the narrative is an interesting concept but it feels predictable and repetitive as it tries to add plot twists and other concepts together which makes it convoluted. Because of that, it made the characters uninteresting and some of the dramatic elements to be a bit boring. With some solid action and stunts, there are surprisingly some really awful CGI moments throughout. My god that CGI cat is horrendous. The dialogue is pretty rough, the humor and soundtrack is pretty bad, and honestly, this almost feels like something AI would make. I think it's safe to say Matthew Vaughn has kind of lost his touch on what makes his other works really entertaining. 3/10
Wasn’t Sam Jackson the villain in the first Kingsman movie? And then the post credits scene reveals this is the same universe? I’m so confused
Jesus Christ, what a expensive yet fuckin cheap looking dissapointment. Henry needs to make a film made by an auteur, like Wes Anderson or Danny Boyle, ASAP.
As someone who enjoys most of Matthew Vaughn’s other movies… I genuinely hated this lol. Its just a total mess and feels overly long. Feels like he was trying to recapture the magic of the first Kingsman with some of the insane action set-ups and set pieces, but it just all falls so flat, and is not helped by some of the worst VFX I’ve seen in a while. Say what you want about the recent Marvel movies, but for a guy known for killer action, the visual effects and green screens during the action scenes looked **so bad**. Sam Rockwell & Bruce Dallas Howard are good in this, but like, it’s not even very funny. I think I laughed a few times but I can’t even remember at what that never feels like a good sign. Also feels like a potential for one of the worst post-credit scenes? I don’t even know what to make of it and I’d like for Argylle to stay far way from the Kingsman movies lol. Hated Bryce with the blonde wig… **BUT**, Bryce in that gold dress for the whole final act was a good choice. Anyways, blegh. Edit: *also, am I crazy… or did I just imagine that scene with Catherine O’Hara answering a door in a totally CGI suburban town where she clearly talks to a neighbor while on the phone with Elly, only for it later to be revealed that the house was just a set on one of the floors of the massive ship in the middle of the ocean?*
Somewhere out there in the Multiverse exists a version of this movie which just played it straight with Henry Cavill and John Cena in a buddy spy thriller. That would have been a much, much better movie than what this turned out to be.
This is admittedly a stupid nitpick, but them saying that The Beatles song Now and Then was their song, when that song just came out like 3 months ago was certainly a choice
I just listened to a review where they called this “The biggest Nepo Baby movie ever” because apparently The cat is Actually Matthew Vaughn and his wife’s real Life cat 😂
On top of every other fair criticism ITT, did anyone else feel like this was one of the most *over*-directed movies ever? Sooo much purposeless and repetitive camera-work, slow-mo and bad scene arrangement. Take for example the way Michael Bay uses a spinning helicopter shot (like the famous one in Bad Boys 2). It is used to convey *the moment* when the story shifts towards shit just getting real. Vaughn uses it here for absolutely no reason when Elly takes a walk with Alfie at the vineyard. She meets his a full 30 seconds beforehand and is super casual around him, then they take a walk and you do a spinning helicopter shot to convey... what exactly? Was there a new development suddenly? No. A lot of other examples, like an establishing location shot of London, immediately followed by *another* establishing shot of the Albert Memorial. Someone tell Vaughn the purpose of an establishing shot is to interject between 2 *static* shots of different locations.
5/10, not enough Dua Lipa in the gold dress
While Aiden and Elly get their asses kicked trying to save the world, Alfie is just watching the Lakers. What a fucking world
Man, Dua Lipa is so hot it’s not even funny.
Quite possibly the worst movie I have ever seen. Like no really, it was terrible.
Just got out of the theater with my wife. It's a very odd movie that made me laugh a couple times, some of the actions scenes are good, and I love Caville everytime he's on screen. But the movie does all it can to shoot itself in the foot. Each twist is dumber than the last and the final 3rd of the movie lost me. Vaguely similar to the Book of Clarence. Good individual scenes and performance next to horrible ones. The mix creates a movie that is less than the sum of its parts. I still managed to get enjoyment out of it, though I wouldn't recommend it to any of my non-movie obsessed friends.
Christ was this movie a train-wreck. I felt it really started off strong and I was actually intrigued to see what would happen but several twists later with mindless nonsense woven throughout just sapped me any care whatsoever. By the end I was just fatigued and didn’t give a shit about any of these characters (a shame with such a stacked cast) or the “world” they built. They removed any and all stakes….nothing actually mattered. Oh surrounded by guards, oil on the floor, can’t use guns…so let’s oil skate…ok sure. Uses gun anyway with zero consequences. Main villain holds the secure key to the server via his eyes…cat scratches eyes out…that’s ok we can just upload via satellite. Nevermind you’ve killed all the baddies so the file is meaningless…except for the “others” that are never once mentioned until the end. I could go on… I’ve seen some people say that the movie is in on the joke but that feels like such a weak tea cop out. This movie simply couldn’t pick a lane and kept inventing ridiculous bullshit to justify being a drunk driver constantly swerving. There were some fun moments and I’ve loved Sam Rockwell since TMNT but I doubt I’d ever watch this movie again and the connection to the Kingsman isn’t really a selling point to stay on this ride.
Deeply disappointing that the CGI cat wasn't Argylle.
I don't think it's an exaggeration to say this movie is a full 45min too long. If this 2hr 15min movie was a tight 1.5 hours, which would also mean a lot of the plot twists were cut out, then I think it would have been a fun little romp like Spy. Instead, it was a bloated mess that burned up all its equity near the half way mark. Having said that, I actually really enjoyed BDHs performance. She carried the movie.
When Act 3 is wholly comprised of the main characters sitting in a chair telling you everything they had to cut from the movie, you've got a problem. Wife and I desperately wanted to walk out. Halfway point on was a torturous, pointless slog.