Review of the movie Argylle

У новому шпигунсько-комедійному екшені від режисера «Кінгсменів» Метью Вона згідно з феміноцентричними трендами головним персонажем є жінка. Although it looks like a movie with Henry Cavill’s Superman, whose bloated muscles are covered with a very tight militarized velvet suit and whose hair is cut in the style of Ivan Drago from Rocky 4, that is, yes, a vintage brutal “playground”. In general, style is exactly what Argylle has (despite the suffering of the computer cat), while witty jokes and common sense are obviously lacking.

When Ellie Conway (Bryce Dallas Howard), the author of the popular spy novels about the fictional super agent Argylle, suddenly finds herself in the midst of spy intrigue, unrestrained chases and constant gunfire (actually, the writer is a stay-at-home cat lady who is afraid of flying, avoids dating and hides in her apartment with her fat cat Alfie, as if in a shell, suddenly becomes a target for very cool, very bad, and very cavalier guys, because by some miracle her contrived writing reveals real spy secrets and even fantastically predicts reality), then the frightened and confused woman with a cat in her backpack-porthole is helped by… no, not Superman or even a fighter in a tight jacket, but a homeless hippie Sam Rockwell.

“John le Carré, Ian Fleming… all the coolest spy novelists turned out to be real spies in the end. Are you a spy too, Ellie Conway?” – a fan jokingly asks at the presentation of the next novel about the adventures of Argyle. “Noooo, I’m guided by my rich imagination… Although if I were a spy, that’s exactly what I would say,” the writer responds with the appropriate balancing act.

Like the Kingsman franchise, Matthew Vaughn’s new film is a cocktail (“shaken, not stirred”) of parodic allusions to a whole bunch of famous spy action movies from Bond to Bourne, from the aforementioned intellectual John le Carré, who sharply and elegantly described the hard-core espionage of the Cold War (and the yellow diamonds palette is very similar to the chessboard wallpaper in the movie adaptation of Spy, Get Out! “), to Marvel comics, where the S.H.I.E.L.D. agency turned out to be a center of the criminal Hydra, and Natasha Romanova’s parents turned out to be fake Soviet spies under cover for years.

In addition to the Jason Bourne impersonation, the character played by Bryce Dallas Howard imitates both Melissa McCarthy in Spy (who was not a housewife, but her bosses always gave her this mocking legend) and Sandra Bullock in Lost City (author of the popular CIA basement), and who, when she finally left the CIA basement, turned from a domestic woman into a tough action heroine), and Sandra Bullock in The Lost City (the author of popular adventure novels, who didn’t like to leave the house, but suddenly found herself in the middle of an adventure, because the romantic fiction on the pages of her books about the lost treasures of the Amazon actually had an archaeological and linguistic basis, and so the writer became a target for a bad guy who was looking for precious antiquities), and even Charlize Theron in Atomic Blonde (who turned out to be a double or even triple agent and who knows whose side she was on).

With Sam Rockwell, the actress has a very nice tandem, at least lively, funny, not exhausted and not drawn to each other by the ears by force, as was the case, for example, with Ana de Armas and Chris Evans in The Phantoms. Rockwell, by the way, portrayed a spy twenty years ago in the intellectual spy thriller Confessions of a Dangerous Man, based on the autobiography of an allegedly real intelligence officer who led a double life and was a popular TV host in public, but turned into a recruited 007 at night. That role brought the actor the Berlin Silver Bear, and it is obvious that Matthew Vaughn also stretched his smarmy parody threads to this one.

Argylle bombards the audience with twists and turns, and they are as ridiculous as they are spectacular. At the same time, Vaughn still manages to put together a ridiculously bizarre puzzle without holes (so bizarre that in the climactic fight we see Olympic figure skating on a rink made of black gold instead of white ice). And the computer Alfie (by the way, like the handsome Alfie played by Jude Law, who was also a spy in the aforementioned Spy) manages not to fall out of the broken window.