When it comes to spy and espionage movies, people immediately think of the cool and sophisticated secret agent who pulls tricks off their sleeve and manages to get the mission done despite all the odds stacked against them. We have franchises like the James Bond films showing the British MI6 agent cleverly navigating the mission at hand with style and precision, or the agents of the Impossible Mission Force doing whatever it takes to save the day in the Mission: Impossible movies. There’s really no shortage of the collective conscious’ idea of what a spy movie should be – and it generally comes with the expectation that the hero gets to defeat the bad guy and save the day before the credits roll in.
All of that gets upturned with the release of Argylle, a new spy action comedy flick from director Matthew Vaughn – the same mind who directed X-Men: First Class, the two Kick-Ass films, and the Kingsman movies. As a fan of his work I was absolutely excited to see his newest feature, and thanks to Universal Pictures Philippines I got to see this last Tuesday January 30 at SM Aura IMAX theater the night before it opened nationwide. All dressed semi casual along with other moviegoers and friends in their best spy inspired attire, we were treated to a very different spy movie that has all the twists and turns to make it a very unique and entertaining serving that should be seen to believe.
Billed with the tag line “The Greater the Spy, The Bigger the Lie”, the film follows a spy novelist named Elly Conway who writes a series of novels called “Argyle” that detail the escapades of a handsome and very collected secret agent named Aubrey Argylle. Her career of work and bliss suddenly turns into a real-life game of life and death as she meets an actual spy named Aiden and finds herself being targeted by a mysterious organization known as the Division. Finding her world slowly blending with the fictional adventures she writes about, Elly starts to unravel a secret world she absolutely had no idea existed – and how that ties into “Argylle” is the biggest mystery of them all she’ll have to find out and solve.
Featuring an all-star cast headlined by Henry Cavill, Dua Lipa, John Cena, Bryce Dallas Howard, Sam Rockwell, Ariana DeBose, Bryan Cranston, Catherine O’ Hara, and Samuel L. Jackson, Argylle has all the makings of a blockbuster film that has all the action and gratuitous violence those who love the genre could ask for. However, a very different and unconventional kind of adventure awaits when you step into cinemas to see this film. Unlike his Kingsman movies, director Matthew Vaugn actually makes a bold and clever twist that totally changes how the movie plays out once you’re in the middle of it. The marketing actually plays on your perception of things, and you would be forgiven to think that you’ll be cruising into this expecting it’s a straightforward spy flick where everyone fights the big bad organization to save the world. That’s actually far from it and not that cookie cutter approach at all, and you may actually find this refreshing or confusing depending on how you manage your expectations.
As one of the first big films to come out this year, Argylle is a refreshing change of pace that shouldn’t be taken seriously and literally is a popcorn spy flick that has a lot of the best and brightest Hollywood has to offer today. If you enjoy Matthew Vaughn films you’ll fell right at home, and the director has voiced his desire to make this film into a franchise of its own and crossover with another one of his past works. That should be a lot of fun, and I definitely would like to see more of this in the future.
Argylle is now playing in cinemas courtesy of Universal Pictures Philippines.