'Argylle' (2024) Review: A Typical Streaming Mockbuster, But Now Also In Theaters

It looks like Universal got their 'Red Notice' after all...

Argylle (2024)
Directed by Matthew Vaughn
Written by Jason Fuchs
Starring Bryce Dallas Howard, Sam Rockwell, Henry Cavill, Bryan Cranston, Catherine O’Hara, Samuel L. Jackson, John Cena, Ariana DeBose and Dua Lipa
Opening theatrically courtesy of Universal on February 2

Apple and MARV’s Argylle, opening theatrically this weekend courtesy of Universal, plays like an approximation of its cinematic intentions, less a distinct original than a slapdash homage that never succeeds in justifying its own existence. In terms of mega-budget, streaming-specific approximations of what an A-level Hollywood blockbuster used to be (now a sub-genre unto itself), the Matthew Vaughn-directed and Jason Fuchs-penned action comedy is admittedly a step or three above the likes of Ghosted. The actors (especially leads Bryce Dallas Howard and Sam Rockwell) are giving it their all, and there’s periodic creativity (especially during the fisticuffs) on display. It’s still mostly bloodless and weightless, lacking a distinct personality or subjective point of view, better to be passively appealing to every potential AppleTV+ territory.  

As even those who have seen the film’s theatrical trailer can tell you, Argylle is more complicated than “Henry Cavill cosplays James Bond alongside John Cena and Dua Lipa.” The opening spy hijinks are fictional novels penned by Elly Conway (Howard) who eventually finds herself accosted on a busy train by a real-life spy (Rockwell). The rough and ragged-looking professional killer informs the flustered author that her shockingly prescient fiction has ruffled the wrong feathers, and that only he can protect her from peril. 

All of this is engagingly staged and amusingly performed, including the first major fight scene where Elly’s POV changes between her seeing Rockwell and her fictional super spy protagonist (Cavill). Yes, it plays as a lower-level riff on Romancing the Stone (or Sandra Bullock’s 2022 hit The Lost City) alongside the underrated Tom Cruise/Cameron Diaz romp Knight and Day before morphing into... no spoilers. That said, as always, it is better to rip-off than remake. Alas, once the introductions are made and the initial train-set action sequence ends, the picture grinds to a halt.  

We are fed copious bits of exposition that makes the movie needlessly complicated and smaller-in-scope, amid sluggish pacing that (like too many other streaming flicks) seems to justify mere casual consumption. Moreover, again feeling like a capitulation to the all-quadrant intentions, there’s a genericness to the story, with our heroes chasing a vague “NOC List”-type document while outrunning a vague group of armed evildoers called “The Division.” These baddies, led by Bryan Cranston, have no clear geopolitical agenda or distinct motivation other than being the bad guys and sending a deluge of expendable armed henchmen after the spy and the novelist.  

Coming from Vaughn, whose Kingsman films were righteously angry and politically inflammatory (while making the implicit social mobility fantasy of the 007 films into explicit text), this feels like a brutal concession to the streaming realities.  

To be fair, recent theatrical releases Wish and Anyone But You both suffer from a certain “All the raw ingredients you crave, but nothing cooked with any discernible flavor” mentality. Still, it revels in that “tons of money – with some of it even onscreen -- but no ideas that would challenge a small child and no cultural specificity that might not play in a given marketplace” mentality that has come to personify the worst in streaming-specific franchise-building.  

What follows amid the film’s second half is a series of “No wait, this thing you thought was true 20 seconds ago is now false!” plot twists. The entire final 50 minutes is a series of false endings, back-sliding twisty reveals and past-tense exposition. However, especially in retrospect, the constant rug-pulling reveals A) barely affect the journey or the destination and B) strain the credulity of even this unapologetically surreal world.  

On the bright side, the final protracted action sequence finally lets Vaughn cut loose – PG-13 aside – and we get the energy and visual wit that had mostly been missing from the drawn-out and padded 139-minute “part one of three” trilogy starter. The film offers a richly colorful and appropriately bright template, courtesy of George Richmond, that plays well in a large theater. Howard and Rockwell have limited chemistry, but both seasoned vets have an enjoyable time playing somewhat against-type.  

They are really the only performers with any real oomph, save for Chip as Alfie, our heroine's constantly (but amusingly) imperiled cat. Even Samuel L. Jackson is essentially confined to sitting at a single desk waiting for the plot to happen, while Cranston (as the heavy) and Catherine O’Hara (as Elly’s mom) are mostly exposition machines. This is one of those “star-packed” vehicles where most of the biggest stars are glorified background characters. Like too many would-be “prologue for the sequel” franchise-starters, Argylle is almost over by the time it finally becomes the movie it wanted to be. 

I used to joke that the likes of War Machine, Death Note and Bright were so bad that they operated as subtle sabotage by making the conventional studio development process look that much better in comparison. That Argylle ended up in theaters feels like a monkey’s paw reaction to folks like me telling streamers to put more of their programmers into multiplexes.  

No, it’s not as bad as Red Notice or (insert your least favorite streaming mockbuster “here’). Nonetheless, the reportedly $200 million-budgeted Argylle is also another example of how – for assorted reasons presumably related to algorithms, budget allocations and all-quadrant demands – so many “big” streaming genre flicks lack the creative urgency and cinematic polish of even a mid-budget theatrical.

The irony, of course, is that Red Notice began life as a Universal theatrical package, one that was to star Dwayne Johnson and Gal Gadot before the deal didn’t pass muster and Netflix came along bringing Ryan Reynolds into the mix. Nearly six years since that project was first announced, Universal got their kinda-sorta Red Notice after all. As Gadot herself might tearfully shout, “I renounce my wish!”