News culture Henry Cavill is lying to us. Argylle is not the film I imagined… and I loved it!

Culture news Henry Cavill is lying to us. Argylle is not the film I imagined… and I loved it!

Argyle in a few words

Since the end of the Daniel Craig era, Rumors are rife regarding the next actor likely to don the James Bond costume. Idris Elba and Aaron Taylor-Johnson were mentioned. The same goes for Henry Cavill who finally took the lead in becoming a spy in Matthew Vaughn’s new film. Certainly, the one who until recently played the Witcher Geralt of Rivia on Netflix and the vigilante Superman for DC is not agent 007 strictly speaking, but he has nothing to envy him.

Argylle is an action comedy directed by Matthew Vaughn and written by Jason Fuchs. The British filmmaker built a solid reputation among comic book fans with Kick-Ass (2010) and X-Men: The Beginning (2011) before launching his own spy saga four years later: Kingsman with Taron Egerton in the title role. In 2024, he offers the services of a five-star cast to fulfill his new mission… code name: Argylle. Henry Cavill here opposite Bryce Dallas Howard, Sam Rockwell, Catherine O’hara, Dua Lipa, Ariana DeBose, Bryan Cranston, John Cena and to conclude in apotheosis… Samuel L. Jackson. MI6 and the Mission Impossible Force had better watch out.

Here is the official synopsis of the film Argylle:

Elly Conway is the reclusive author of a series of bestselling spy novels, whose idea of ​​happiness is a quiet evening at home with her computer and her cat, Alfie. But when the plots of his books, centered on secret agent Argylle and his fight to dismantle a global spy ring, begin to bear an uncanny resemblance to the covert operations of a real spy organization, his tranquility only becomes more a memory. Alongside Aiden, a spy who is allergic to cats, Elly does not hesitate to take Alfie in her backpack to embark on a race against time to the four corners of the planet in order to outrun dangerous killers and prevent his fictions to surpass reality. – Universal Pictures France

Argylle is released in cinemas on January 31, 2024 in France.

A shameless and enjoyable lie

I won’t go so far as to say that Matthew Vaughn is one of my favorite directors, but I must admit that his filmography is, in my eyes, one of the most consistent and entertaining of the last 20 years. The British director never really disappointed me, even if The Kingsman: First Mission was only “sympathetic” failing to transcend the saga. All of this is to say that I welcome the announcement of a new Matthew Vaughn film with sincere excitement, and Argylle is no exception.

Some moviegoers complain, and rightly so, about trailers which reveal too much and which spoil the pleasure of discovery in theaters. The Argylle trailer was only made up of images taken from the first 28 minutes in order to protect future spectators from the slightest spoiler, to the point of lying about the very nature of the film experience to come. The lie… that’s the whole principle of a film that can be summed up in its motto: “The Greater the Spy, The Bigger the Lie” (translated into French as “The better the spy, the worse the betrayal). “). Matthew Vauhgn and the actors knowingly and unscrupulously lie to you throughout, and personally I want more.

This feature film is playful to the highest degree and plays with our expectations. He openly embraces the codes of the genre in which he is part to better reappropriate the spy film and make a somewhat hackneyed formula his own. The story seems at first glance sewn with white thread, and it is in many respects. However, at times he knows how to turn his coat around and chain revelations and other twists and turns, which can quickly cause a feeling of dizziness. Argylle’s pen proves to be as elusive as the characters whose exploits she narrates, and in my eyes this is one of the great qualities of the film.

This narrative dance would be impossible without an audience of actors and actresses who are truly invested and who give their body and soul to interpret characters who are essentially caricatures. Henry Cavill histrionics like never before, and it’s a delight. Bryce Dallas Howard composes a novelist with a thousand and one talents whose destiny we will keep silent while Sam Rockwell surprisingly gives a hard time to the henchmen who stand in his way. The execution of the fight scenes is also credited to the film. Always as violent and inventive, they delighted the cinematic fighting lover that I am.

Unfortunately, Argylle suffers from digital special effects that do not live up to its blockbuster status. In other words, several scenes produced in computer graphics would have deserved much more than a polish before being shown in the cinema. This contemporary evil which mainly affects Hollywood productions (Disney, Warner Bros., etc.) has recently spread to cinemas, and that terrifies me. However, the budget of this film produced by Apple Original Films amounts to 200 million US dollars, which makes this lack of finish even more incomprehensible.

Argylle is everything I expected from Matthew Vaughn’s new film, and maybe even more. Far from being perfect, it is as entertaining as it is confusing, and proves that another path exists to becoming a legendary spy.