Review by John P. Harvey.
In a world of uncontrolled espionage and casual assassination, the fate of the world’s author rests upon the most unlikely stranger.
Novelist Elly Conway (Bryce Dallas Howard) is on a book tour. Her hit series of novels features the spy Argylle (Henry Cavill), assisted by his spy partner, Wyatt (John Cena) since the death of his previous partner, Keira (Ariana DeBose), at the hands of international terrorist Lagrange (Dua Lipa).
In Elly’s novels, these super spies then worked for the Division, a global espionage outfit that Argylle is now determined to expose. Their lives are action-packed, and if their characters lack depth, the books’ fans don’t mind.
Their author, by contrast, lives quietly with her cat, Alfie (Chip): a life that is simple, reclusive, and safe — until the day she meets a stranger on a train who saves her from attack by the real Division, headed by the utterly ruthless Director Ritter (Bryan Cranston).
Elly’s new friend, Aidan Wilde (Sam Rockwell), catapults Elly — and the hapless Alfie — into an adventure so far outside her experience that her mother, Ruth (Catherine O’Hara), can ascribe it only to drug-induced hallucinations.
This rollicking high-octane comedy has to be seen to be believed, and seen again for the sheer joy of reliving it. Its colourful effects and stunts alone are unmissable, but what makes the movie a standout is its intricate plotting. Though thinking it through afterward may reveal one or two plot holes, its effect as you experience it is to use one twist after another in a fiendish scheme to unravel your understanding of what the adventure and its chief characters are truly about.
Argylle manages simultaneously to caricature the motif of the sophisticated spy and to supercool it, and it’s the most fun you can have as a body count slips beyond all reckoning. Remember to allow time for your second session of this most enjoyable of spy movies.