Argylle
A rollocking, rollercoaster, Matthew Vaughn’s spy action comedy, Argylle, has more twists and turns than a pretzel. As it jumps back and forth between imagination and reality, it starts out strong but eventually becomes borderline ridiculous, demanding a high level of suspension-of-disbelief from its viewers.
The film’s bold narrative journey is the sure-fire foundation of its enjoyable, slick, and chaotic experience. Despite its retro vibe and similarities to flicks like the more recent Knight and Day and the 1980’s, Romancing the Stone, Argylle is nonetheless great fun with all the best elements of spying, comedy, music, and action expertly rolled into one.
In the film Elly Conway is a reclusive spy novelist who gets drawn into the real world of espionage when the plots of her books—which feature a fictional secret agent called Argylle—get dangerously close to the activities of a sinister underground gang. Elly and her beloved cat Alfie are thrown into a hidden realm where no one is who they seem to be the second that clandestine agent Aidan shows up to rescue Elly from certain death and reveals that Agent Argylle really exists.
Written by Jason Fuchs and directed by Vaughn, Argylle stars Henry Cavill as the titular character. The film boasts an A-list ensemble cast, including Bryce Dallas Howard as the fictional version of herself in her books and Sam Rockwell as the mysterious agent who rescues our heroine from her ordinary existence.
Every single one of the supporting actors—John Cena, Bryan Cranston, Catherine O’Hara, Dua Lipa, Ariana DeBose, and Samuel L. Jackson—delivers an electric performance that practically bursts from the screen, yet it’s Alfie, Elly’s feline companion that steals the show throughout the film with his bashful cuteness and glib facial expressions that would put the cat in a famous pet food commercial to shame, subdued in his backpack-cat-carrier, up to to the end, the cat is literally then let out of the bag!
Argylle releases in cinemas on Friday, 2 February 2024.
-Dirk Lombard Fourie