Argylle | Film Review

Elly Conway (Bryce Dallas Howard) is an author who writes spy novels featuring secret agent Argylle. But when the plots of her books begin to mirror events in the real spy world, Elly finds herself in grave danger.

I saw the trailer for this movie while watching another film and wasn't particularly interested in it. But after hearing and reading all the (mostly negative) reviews, I wanted to see what it was all about!

I didn't hate the film, but I didn't really like it either. There's definitely more bad than good about this one.

But one good thing - I really liked how it began. The beginning reminded me a lot of 'The Lost City', and I liked seeing the transitions from Argylle to Elly and back.

However, one of the first problems I had was that Elly seemed like the least interesting character in the film she leads. I wanted to see more of everyone else and a bit less of her.

But that being said, none of the characters are great, and none of them feel like real people. This kind of works for a film so outlandish, but doesn't help if the filmmakers wanted the audience to take the film seriously. Because there's nothing serious about it.

Another thing that stopped me from taking the film seriously was the music choices. They were fun, but some scenes could have been taken more seriously without them.

My biggest problem with the film was that a spy movie with a premise like this should be a lot more interesting. 

The film is over 2 hours long, and absolutely doesn't need to be. In fact, the longer it went on, the more bored I got. But particularly after the reveal - without giving too much away, the character of Elly goes through a change, and when this happens, what good the story had is lost.

The fight scenes completely threw me. Looking at the director's filmography, the first two Kingsman movies had great, imaginative, enjoyable fight scenes all the way through. This film had one imaginative fight scene, and all the others (of which there were many) were so bland and usual they're not worth mentioning.

The saving grace of the film, for me, was that Bryce Dallas Howard and Sam Rockwell have good chemistry. It's interesting to see them together, and when Elly goes through a change, their relationship changes, and that was fun to watch.

What's really annoying is that I really really like the overall story. The plot, the twist, written down it's the kind of thing I should love. But the way it was put together wasn't great at all.

Overall, I don't hate it as much as other reviews I've seen, but I'm really disappointed with what it turned into. It could have been amazing!

4.5/10