Argylle — Review: This Movie is Wild
by KJ Proulx
Matthew Vaughn has always been a director I have admired. Whether you are talking about his earlier works in Layer Cake or Stardust, or his over-the-top action films in Kick-Ass or The Kingsman films, I have never disliked his work until recently. It was not until 2021’s The King’s Man that I found his work to feel a little stale. That film didn’t work for me on many levels, but I have either liked or loved the rest of his filmography otherwise. Well, you can put Argylle down as another one of his that I liked. There has been a lot of criticism, but I do not fully agree with it.
This is going to be a difficult one to describe without sounding confusing, but I will give it a go. Elly Conway (Bryce Dallas Howard) is a novelist who has written a book series known as Argylle. What she does not realize is that the events of the book have actually happened in reality and continue to happen in real-time as she writes her next sequel. In comes Aidan Wilde (Sam Rockwell), a spy who shows up to protect Elly and takes her on a crazy adventure, avoiding a real-life spy organization out to get her. While this plot goes on, Elly sees visions of the main character in her book, Argylle (Henry Cavill), who helps her both keep and lose focus on her tasks. What I will say is that this film did not market itself well.
