Argylle

Taking my seat, I had my fingers crossed that director Matthew Vaughn (Kingsman) had resurrected his career with a romping good spy story, set against a cracking soundtrack with some great actors.
The opening, with a red-hot Dua Lupa  and Henry Cavil was upbeat, but alas! From the sight of Cavill’s haircut onwards, it was all downhill.
The story introduces the pudgy best-selling spy writer, Elly Conway, played by Bryce Dallas Howard, (daughter of Director, Ron Howard). Presented both as an author and later as a special agent, Howard’s performance scores low on credibility and high on irritability. Unfortunately, she doesn’t have the charisma or range to carry the part, but is it all her fault?
Almost from the opening we’re served up the thinnest of premises, that somehow Elly’s published novels are ‘predictive’ and so she’s become a target for the secret service/bad guys. Thus her ‘real’ life intersects with her fiction – throw in a pet cat and you have a winner, right? Wrong! (The cat-gags might be a high point, but like the film even they wear thin.)
There was a great opportunity here, to contrast the difference between Elly’s romanticised fiction and the gritty reality of the spy-world. But it’s handled all wrong. In another life, with a different take this might have been movie gold.
Henry Cavill as Elly’s fictional character, Agent Argylle, and the film’s namesake, runs himself out of contention for any Bond films. His performance is more wooden than Pinocchio’s – and like his haircut, awkward.
As to the plot, it has more holes in it than cheese. Scriptwriter, Jason Fuchs asks the viewer to suspend disbelief so many times that it becomes a lesson in idiocy.
Were they trying to parody the good-old super spy genre with a twist to every twist? Unfortunately, the result is just plain dumb. For example, Pudgy Elly suddenly becomes a crack shot and hyper-fit operative, even though (according the story,) she’s spent the last five years sitting on her arse, eating junk food and tapping out vapid novels.
The film uses dance sequences as humour,  but mostly they’re crudely delivered – a bit like the oil scene, where killer Elly, can suddenly ice-skate through it. (But hang on, wasn’t the bit about her being an ice-skater just a memory-plant so how did she get the skills, physically speaking? Yeah, that’s right, most of us can execute a quadruple axel on a whim. And…FYI oil is not ice.)
Spy, Aiden Wilde’s character should be shot for the stupidity of his dialogue alone, although actor Sam Rockwell, does his best with the appalling material. One wonders what was anyone was thinking? If they were they thinking at all, that is.
Just as Kingsman got the pace, soundtrack and acting just right, Argylle is the opposite; the music’s wrong, the pace is wrong, the acting is embarrassing and the plot is woeful. This was a bit like watching a boat full of leaks, sink – no expense spared and no CGI could save it.
Resisting the strong urge to leave several times over, I sat this pointless misery out until I could bear no more. Not even veteran actors Richard E Grant, Bryan Cranston and Samuel L Jackson can save this purported 200-million-dollar howler..
Two hours and 19 minutes too long, it’s not often that one resents the $35 dollars spent on a premium ticket, but if I could, I’d tap at the box office window and beg for my money back.
Rating:  Get a refund before you sit down