Argylle Review: Cringe Chick Flick Spy Movie

Well, the good news is that Henry Cavill can still play James Bond and he no longer owes a favor to Matthew Vaughn for Stardust.

The bad news is that Argylle is a cringe-fest chick flick spy movie.

Hey, we got James Bond so I suppose it’s okay if they have their Argylle, right?

Aimed at the female audience

So I went into the movie not watching any of the trailers or knowing much of anything about the movie. I knew it “starred” Henry Cavill and that Bryce Dallas Howard played an author where she may have dreamt up Henry Cavill or something. I also knew Dua Lipa was in it and that it’s directed by Matthew Vaughn.

Also, I wasn’t expecting this to be Henry Cavill as James Bond, which of course was thanks to the goofy look of Cavill, so if you are expecting Argylle to be a Henry Cavill James Bond movie, you are grossly mistaken.

What Agylle really is, is a spy movie made for women. It’s a romance novel and a spy thriller all wrapped up in one (it kinda reminded me of Romancing the Stone but on steroids, or maybe estrogen?).

You know what? There’s nothing wrong with that, but I’ll say Argylle isn’t the movie for me.

I will also say for the most part the movie is done well: The directing is really good, the action scenes and fight choreography are done really well, the acting is great, and overall, the story is pretty good, too.

However, again, this is a movie aimed at the female audience: It’s got two hunks with Henry Cavill and John Cena; it’s got Dua Lipa (I guess they couldn’t afford Taylor Swift, right?); it’s got romance (there’s even pink smoke and purple hearts!); it’s got women that kick ass and save the day; it has a happy ending, and of course it has a cat (which really should be your first warning that something is wrong with this movie – more on that below) which happens to be the cat of supermodel Claudia Schiffer (is that supposed to mean something???).

Spoilers follow:

Regarding the cat, the cat is cringe as fuck. What they did with the cat in two scenes ruined the movie for me. It wasn’t needed, but the scenes were obviously intentionally written that way just to include “cat” scenes. Just why (same question for The Marvels)?

The first scene I am referring to is when they jumped off the building. It wasn’t as bad as the next scene, but it came off as cringe and eye-rolling when the cat popped back up.

The second scene I am referring to is so bad and full of awful cringe-induced writing — again, just to have a cat scene.

So at the end, they have to upload the file and send it to Samuel L. Jackson’s character, so they go to the mainframe database room or whatever it’s called.

However, it requires a biometric scan, the eyes of Bryan Cranston’s character. Well, Cranston is going to shoot them, but the cat jumps out in really crappy CGI (Bryce Dallas Howard carries the cat in her cat-backpack throughout the entire movie – more cringe) and attacks Cranston and scratches his eyes, so they can’t use his eyes for the biometric scan.

The solution? Bryce Dallas Howard knows at the deck of the boat that they can bypass that somehow and simply send the file directly using the satellite (or some shit).

Question: Why the fuck didn’t they just do that in the first place? Answer: So we can have another stupid cat scene (what’s with cats???).

The end is also cringe when everything is revealed. It’s just way too over the top and unbelievable, and I can’t say cringe enough (I think Christina Perri’s Twilight music, “A Thousand Years,” started to play).

Overall, I give the movie a 4/10.

Oh, and the post-credit scene, I had no idea what it meant other than the name of the bar and what that obviously referenced.