Upon watching the first thirty-five seconds of the trailer for Argylle, it doesn’t take fans of 2022’s The Lost City very long to immediately spot a certain glaring correlation between the latter and the former. Right down to Argylle’s, spy novel author, Elly Conway (Bryce Dallas Howard, not to be confused with Jessica Chastain, who once starred in a Matthew Vaughn-written movie called The Debt), being extremely introverted and “married to her work.” While The Lost City’s Loretta Sage (Sandra Bullock) might not have a cat she’s devoted to the way Elly is (another extremely gimmicky element of the movie), she embodies, for all intents and purposes, the same “lonely cat lady” trope. Where Loretta has a pushy manager, Beth Hatten (Da’Vine Joy Randolph), hounding her to finish the book so she can start her tour of it, Elly has her pushy mother, Ruth Conway (Catherine O’Hara), to make her write a different ending to the final installment in the Argylle series.
After reading the finale to the book, Ruth insists that Elly owes her readers more than that. Just like Dash McMahon a.k.a. Alan (Channing Tatum), the cover model for Loretta’s books, insists that she owes it to her readers to keep the Lovemore series—steeped in the erotic romance-adventure genre—going, even though she announces her plans to end it. Like Elly, she’s run out of things to say…and she also just thinks the books are generally schlocky, and not representative in the least of her true intelligence. The same ultimately goes for Elly, after Argylle’s screenwriter, Jason Fuchs, throws in an amnesia plotline that will eventually reveal Elly is an untapped reserve of far more intelligence than she lets on. An “alter ego” that will inevitably lead to her wearing an atrocious sequined gold dress that she doesn’t quite rock with the same panache as Loretta with her fuchsia sequined jumpsuit (on loan, of course).
Loretta’s own intelligence, too, has been suppressed in favor of using her archaeology degree to make the main character in her series seem more “believable.” Even though there is nothing believable about an archaeologist named Dr. Lovemore. An archaeologist named Dr. Sage, on the other hand, slightly more so. Alas, Loretta no longer pursues her archaeological ambitions “legitimately.” And that’s been making her feel like enough of a sham lately to call it quits on the erotic novel front. Stuck on the last chapter, just as Elly is with her own final installment in the Argylle series, Loretta decides to slap together an ending, much to Alan’s dismay. Not just because it puts him out of a job, but because he has a long-time crush on Loretta and losing proximity/access to her, however rare, is a bitter pill to swallow. Loretta, of course, couldn’t be more oblivious to his affections…in the same mousy, bookish manner that Elly is oblivious to the fondness Aidan Wilde (Sam Rockwell) has for her when he initially approaches her on a train under the guise of being a “regular Joe.”
Turns out, he’s there to save her from the bevy of fellow spies on the train (a concept that itself reeks of the banal Brad Pitt movie, Bullet Train) out to kidnap her for, what else, her savvy spy mind. As displayed with unexpected perspicacity and foresight in the books she’s written. Foresight that is so accurate, as a matter of fact, that the top/most dangerous spy organization in the world, the Division, truly believes she’s the only one who can find what (or rather, who) they’re looking for. In the same fashion, Abigail Fairfax (Daniel Radcliffe), the man who kidnaps Loretta in The Lost City, does so because, as he reminds her, “Your fictional archaeologist was making real translations of a dead language. Something no one else has been able to do.” He then reminds her that she was once a young college student doing her dissertation on the lost language that will lead Abigail to the Crown of Fire, a valuable yet priceless treasure that has thus far only been the stuff of lore. Until Loretta gave Abigail hope that she could crack the code to finding it.
Aidan, too, hopes that Elly can use her unique writer’s brain to tap into some arcane spy knowledge that will lead them to the British hacker who holds the Masterkey (better known as a USB drive) with all the damning evidence against the Division and its corrupt members. And, naturally, because Vaughn expects us to believe that Elly is just that shrewd (along with a lot of other things we’re supposed to “just believe”), she effortlessly figures out how to find him as she and Aidan embark on an increasingly dangerous, unexpected and all-over-the-map (literally and figuratively) journey. Which, yes, is precisely what happens in The Lost City. Except the hijinks that ensue once Loretta is kidnapped (also forced to take a plane she doesn’t want to get on, as is the case with Elly) are at least far more humorous and endearing to watch unfold (not to mention much less filled with so much expository dialogue).
Maybe this is because one knows that The Lost City isn’t trying to be everything to everyone. Doesn’t seek to extend beyond the confines of its rom-com adventure genre. One that mimics the spirit of 80s classics like Romancing the Stone and the various Indiana Jones movies of that decade. This being what The Lost City does as well, and yet with just a dash more credibility and a tone that is far less “look how clever we, the writer and director, are.” Goddamn, they’re acting like they’re capable of the kind of artful meta plotline that was present in Scream. Unfortunately, that’s not the scenario.
In any event, even The Lost City couldn’t fully melt the hearts of critics like Manohla Dargis, who wrote at the time of the film’s release: “The Lost City remains a copy of a copy.” One supposes that makes Argylle a copy of a copy of a copy. And not a very well-executed one at that. Not half as well-made as The Lost City anyway, a film that has apparently stoked a rash of imitators in the genre, including the J. Lo atrocity that was Shotgun Wedding.
Perhaps the sudden increased interest in spy and/or action-adventure rom-coms is a sign of the times, what with a reboot of Mr. and Mrs. Smith in TV series format also occurring this year. Whatever that sign is, it doesn’t exactly bode well for the “new Cold War”…or the hooey content of movies like Argylle.
