By Nicholas BarberFeatures correspondent
Apple TVFrom Matthew Vaughn, the director of the Kingsman films, Argylle stars Dua Lipa, Bryce Dallas Howard and Sam Rockwell in a Bond pastiche that is “shoddy” and “derivative”.
Matthew Vaughn certainly loves James Bond pastiches. His last three films – Kingsman: The Secret Service, Kingsman: The Golden Circle, and The King’s Man – were all homages to the 007 franchise, and his new film, Argylle, goes a step further. It’s a James Bond pastiche inside a James Bond pastiche.
More like this:
– Could Lily Gladstone win the best actress Oscar?
It begins with a sequence in which Henry Cavill’s tall, dark and ridiculously handsome Agent Argylle meets a slinky femme fatale (Dua Lipa) in an exclusive club on a Greek island. After a bit of flirting, and the daftest dance routine this side of Poor Things, there’s a machine-gun shoot-out, a rooftop car chase, some high-tech surveillance, and some gobbledygook about a “master file” that could expose the machinations of a mysterious crime syndicate.
It’s a painful collection of silly clichés and unconvincing visual effects, but the twist is that it’s supposed to be like that. (Well, most of it’s supposed to be like that. Whether Lipa’s wooden acting is deliberate or not is open to question.)
Agent Argylle’s Bond-ish adventures are actually taking place in the imagination of a shy author named Elly (Bryce Dallas Howard). It turns out that she has written a bestselling series of spy novels complete with its own extensive merchandise range – but no film or TV adaptation, it seems – and the sequence we have just been shown is the finale she is planning for her latest book.
Then comes another twist. A scruffy stranger named Aidan (Sam Rockwell) saves Elly from a crowd of assassins on a train, and she realises that he is exactly the kind of secret agent she has been writing about. Aidan is a laidback American in a leather jacket and jeans, rather than a suave Brit in a tailored Nehru jacket, but otherwise he is essentially Agent Argylle brought to life.
Just to add to her amazement, he tells her that her books have a remarkable habit of predicting what various bad guys are getting up to in the real world. If she can just finish her new book, it could help Aidan find an actual “master file” packed with enough incriminating information to bring down a Spectre-like organisation.
Elly doesn’t have much choice but to cooperate, given how many crazed killers Aidan has just foiled, and so the pair of them, accompanied by Elly’s pet cat, zip off to London and beyond, hoping to get their hands on the master file before the baddies get their hands on her.
This isn’t the first caper to have a mild-mannered woman being dragged into danger by a hunky daredevil: the obvious precursors are Charade, Romancing the Stone and Knight and Day. But while Argylle is harmless fun with some surprising plot twists, it has to be the least charming of the bunch.
The problem is that the scenes featuring Elly and Aidan in the film’s real world are just as generic and cartoonish as the ones featuring Agent Argyle in Elly’s books. There is no contrast – no witty disparity between the far-fetched daydreams she has of the spy game, and how it actually is. In both realities, the effects look fake, the plotting is ludicrous, and the characters are unbelievable (Elly is never bothered by all the people being killed around her), so the premise comes to seem pointless. If the film’s fantasy is a cardboard copy of 007, and its reality is a cardboard copy of 007, why do we need both?
The feeling that we’re seeing a photocopy of a photocopy arises in part from Jason Fuchs’ screenplay, which could have been written by anyone with a hazy memory of a Bond film. Everywhere you look, there are details that need to be added, plot holes that need to be filled, and jokes that need to be improved.
The villain, forgettably played by Bryan Cranston, appears to have almost infinite power and resources, but no one explains who he is or what he wants. He struts around a command centre that is either full of trusty employees, or empty of them, depending on what the plot requires. And the dialogue ranges from lazy – “He makes Darth Vader look like Mary Poppins” – to nonsensical. Take the film’s slogan, “The greater the spy, the bigger the lie.” I appreciate that it rhymes, but what is it supposed to mean?
Argylle
Cast: Bryce Dallas Howard, Sam Rockwell, Dua Lipa, Henry Cavill
In its defence, at least Argylle is distinctively a Matthew Vaughn film. Several of his trademarks are in there, such as gimmicky, acrobatic fights accompanied by upbeat pop songs, and references to his supermodel wife, Claudia Schiffer: in one hotel room scene, her name is visible on the spines of the books.
It’s also apparent that Vaughn has serious influence in the music business. The second Kingsman film had a cameo from Elton John, but Argylle tops that by making prominent use of Now and Then, the Beatles song that came out in November, but which, in the world of the film, has been out for several years. It feels sacrilegious. Now and Then is probably the last new release that will ever be credited to the greatest pop group in history. Were the surviving Beatles really so short of cash that they felt compelled to license it to a dopey spy farce? Suddenly, the internet rumours that Taylor Swift wrote the film’s spin-off novel don’t seem quite so absurd.
The one Vaughn trademark that Argylle is lacking is the director’s usual adolescent offensiveness. He’s taken out all the sex, gore and swearing, which may be a sign of belated maturity, but which leaves Argylle seeming all too close to Ghosted, Shotgun Wedding, Freelance, Murder Mystery, and the other sort-of action, sort-of romance, sort-of comedy films which have been dumped on streaming services over the last couple of years. They’re all vapid, anonymous blocks of content, but at least the others offer something vaguely glamorous to slump in front of in your living room when you can’t settle on anything more nourishing to watch. Argylle, on the other hand, is being released in cinemas, so the shoddy and derivative nature of the enterprise is harder to forgive.
The worst part is that, according to the internet, Vaughn has got another Argylle film and two more Kingsman films in the pipeline. He just can’t stop himself. A Bond pastiche inside a Bond pastiche inside a Bond pastiche can’t be far away.
★★☆☆☆
If you liked this story, sign up for The Essential List newsletter – a handpicked selection of features, videos and can’t-miss news delivered to your inbox every Friday.
If you would like to comment on this story or anything else you have seen on BBC Culture, head over to our Facebook page or message us on Twitter.