Matthew Vaughn is a director who has shown us how he unpacks the spy genre over his filmography. What makes Argylle stand out is focusing the story on Elly Conway (Bryce Dallas Howard), a woman who writes spy novels but is not a spy herself. Having that female perspective makes all the difference.
Set in a world split between the characters that Elly has created in her novels and a real spy story she falls into, Argylle keeps you engaged in its over-2-hour runtime by continuing to tell both sides of the story. Agent Argylle (Henry Cavill) might be a male model-looking spy who has the qualities of James Bond, with a sidekick who is all the muscle named Wyatt (John Cena), but Elly finds herself with a spy named Aidan (Sam Rockwell), who’s not nearly as suave or skilled as Argylle. Her real-life spy mission is a mess of Elly not wanting to be involved and Aidan showing her what it actually means to be in espionage.
With an all-star cast including Catherine O’Hara as Elly’s mother, Ariana DeBose as Kiera, and Bryan Cranston as the leader of a real organization trying to capture Elly for what she knows, the movie manages to bring both worlds together flawlessly for the audience.
Whether it is the cartoonish way that Agent Argylle is described (square hair and all) or how her novel slowly becomes a reality she finds herself in, what works about Argylle is that it is about Elly at its core.
And though Vaughn’s work in the spy world is not something new, this time, he’s bringing to life a script by Jason Fuchs, and the duo manages to make a commentary on spy stories that doesn’t fall into the same old tropes.
A different spy story for Vaughn
I am an unapologetic fan of the Kingsman movies. I’ve talked heavily about how they are responsible for my job here at The Mary Sue, but I do recognize that the movies fall into the sexist tropes that spy movies often champion. What Argylle does it erase that completely from the narrative, mainly through Elly Conway’s keyboard.
It’s not that Vaughn’s other spy movies or other work didn’t have female leads, but what makes Argylle stand out is that Elly is our guide. She’s the main character and a woman who really gives off that “reader insert” feel as she stumbles her way through this spy world she thought she made up with Aidan.
Rockwell and Howard use Elly’s fish out of water energy to their advantage by playing up the comedy of any given moment off each other, and it makes for stellar performances, a hilarious dynamic between Aidan and Elly, and a relationship that you are invested in right from the jump.
Cats do rule
The aspect of Argylle that is truly the best does come from the fact that Elly’s cat Alfie (played by Vaughn’s own pet cat named Chip) is not used as an “ugh, cats suck” joke. Often in movies, we are subjected to lies about our feline friends, and cat owners continue to get the short end of the stick. While Vaughn worked with dogs in the Kingsman franchise, Alfie’s role in Argylle is different.
He grounds Elly to her real life, the one thing she never wants to leave behind, and in a lot of ways, it makes Elly instantly relatable. She’s just a woman trying to write with her cat. That’s something I can definitely relate to and I’m not alone in that thinking.
A wonderfully fun time
The reality is that Argylle is just very fun. Leaving the theater felt the same as when I watched Kingsman: The Secret Service for the first time. I wanted more. I needed to know when I’d be back with Elly Conway again and whether or not Alfie got all the treats because of their journey. Argylle instantly made me care about these characters and want to know more about them in the same way I did with Eggsy and Harry.
It’s a skill that Vaughn has with his movies. You want to go back to that world time and time again. With Argylle, there is so much story to tell in this wacky universe and I truly do hope we get to revisit the magic.
(featured image: Universal Pictures)
