Movie Review: ‘Argylle’ Won’t Blow Your Socks Off 

(From L to R) US actors Sam Rockwell and Bryce Dallas Howard pose with British actor Henry Cavill for photos during a press conference to promote their film "Argylle" in Seoul on January 18, 2024. (AFP)
(From L to R) US actors Sam Rockwell and Bryce Dallas Howard pose with British actor Henry Cavill for photos during a press conference to promote their film "Argylle" in Seoul on January 18, 2024. (AFP)
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Movie Review: ‘Argylle’ Won’t Blow Your Socks Off 

(From L to R) US actors Sam Rockwell and Bryce Dallas Howard pose with British actor Henry Cavill for photos during a press conference to promote their film "Argylle" in Seoul on January 18, 2024. (AFP)
(From L to R) US actors Sam Rockwell and Bryce Dallas Howard pose with British actor Henry Cavill for photos during a press conference to promote their film "Argylle" in Seoul on January 18, 2024. (AFP)

A checkered mesh of mysteries have accompanied the release of Matthew Vaughn’s “Argylle.” There is the promoted one: Who is the “real” Agent Argylle? Then there’s all the (baseless) conjecture over whether argyle aficionado Taylor Swift had anything to do with the film. But most of all: Why two L’s? While we can finally put to rest the first two puzzles, we’re left to posit that the spelling must be to differentiate the movie for those who just want to buy a pair of socks.

The socks would be a wiser investment. “Argylle,” a $200 million production from Apple Films opening in theaters Thursday, is a big bet to kickstart a new spy series, presumably with iterations to follow such as “Plaidd” and “Herringbonne.”

Criss-crossing patterns of ridiculousness and self-satisfaction run through “Argylle,” a tiresome meta movie that puts an awful lot of zest into an awfully empty high-concept story.

There are all kinds of dumb movies. It can even be good quality. “Step Brothers,” for instance, is a brilliantly dumb movie. “Argylle” knows it’s preposterous and it’s trying to have fun with that. But it’s a strained, unimaginative effort, over-reliant on twists and needle drops, that leaves “Argylle” on the bad side of dumb. The best that you can say about “Argylle” is that it comes by its dumbness genuinely.

Bryce Dallas Howard stars as Elly Conway, a bestselling spy novelist who lives quietly with her (CGI enhanced) cat, Alfie, while conjuring globe-trotting adventures for her agent Argylle. The movie’s clunky prologue plunges us into his world, as Argylle (Henry Cavill) dances with and then pursues a slinky target (Dua Lipa, whose few minutes in the film may be its best).

While Elly mulls a new ending for her fifth book, she’s thrown into a real-world espionage thriller. While on the train, an actual, more scruffy-looking spy, Adrian (Sam Rockwell), approaches her just as mean-looking guys are closing in. Throughout the encounter, Elly blinks and sees Argylle in the place of Adrian, a bit of fiction-vs-reality that will play throughout “Argylle” in mostly uninteresting ways.

It’s a premise familiar from better movies like “Romancing the Stone” or “The Lost City.” But while those films filled their adventures with comedy, “Argylle” is surprisingly unfunny, a lacking Jason Fuchs’ script tries to make up for with one switcheroo after another. Eventually, the whole movie feels like a joke, even if it contains few of them.

The actors nearly keep the movie’s absurd plate-spinning going. Among them are Bryan Cranston as the head of a shadowy organization called the Division, and Catherine O’Hara as Elly’s mother. But roles are fluid in “Argylle.” It’s a testament to Howard’s charm that “Argylle” is watchable, at all, and Rockwell, too, elevates the material.

Vaughn’s knack for combining a smirky sense of humor with flashy, slo-mo ultra-violence has previously won him fans in the “Kingsman” film series. He delights in running spy tropes through an irreverent wringer. (If “Kingsman” was a 007 riff, “Argylle” cribs from “Bourne.”) His movies, while often colorful and spirited, are slyly nasty with a slightly obnoxious juvenile underpinning of “can you believe I’m really doing this in a studio movie?”

With enough plot twists to make a daytime soap blush, “Argylle” shows just how little that can add up to. You might think: spy movie, fun actors, pleasing diagonal lines — how bad can it be? As much as we all could use a fun movie for fun’s sake, you, too, may have your concerns about the limits of such pointlessness around the time when Bryce Dallas Howard glides across an oil spill on skates of knives. Plus, no movie genuinely interested in a good time would dare not give Catherine O’Hara room to be funny. All she needs is an inch.

In the end, the mysteries that surrounded “Argylle” ahead of its release were far more intriguing than those that play out during its lengthy runtime. Those questions go more like: Are they really repeatedly using the Apple Music tie-in Beatles song “Now and Then”? And: This film can’t be 139-minutes long, can it?

If there’s one person who seems to have the right idea in “Argylle,” it’s, as usual, Samuel L. Jackson. He has some vague role that requires him to await an important transmission from Adrian. But this effectively means he spends much of the movie far from the action, watching the Lakers game. Smart guy.



How the World’s Press Rated Paris’s Olympics Opening Ceremony

Former French football player Zinedine Zidane holds the Olympic torch during the opening ceremony of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games in Paris on July 26, 2024. (AFP)
Former French football player Zinedine Zidane holds the Olympic torch during the opening ceremony of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games in Paris on July 26, 2024. (AFP)
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How the World’s Press Rated Paris’s Olympics Opening Ceremony

Former French football player Zinedine Zidane holds the Olympic torch during the opening ceremony of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games in Paris on July 26, 2024. (AFP)
Former French football player Zinedine Zidane holds the Olympic torch during the opening ceremony of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games in Paris on July 26, 2024. (AFP)

Paris broke with tradition on Friday by turning the Olympic Opening Ceremony into a parade down the River Seine rather than a stadium-based show.

TV viewers around the world were treated to a spectacle performed on bridges, the riverbank and rooftops, culminating with French athletes Marie-Jose Perec and Teddy Riner lighting the Olympic cauldron and a performance from Canada's Celine Dion.

However, the 6,000-odd athletes, 3,000 performers, 300,000 spectators and dozens of world leaders had to endure heavy rain for much of the event.

Here's how the world's media judged Paris's ambitious ceremony:

FRANCE

Newspaper Le Monde wrote in a rave review that director Thomas Jolly "succeeded in his challenge of presenting an immersive show in a capital transformed into a gigantic stage".

Right-leaning Le Figaro said the show was "great but some of it was just too much". It said viewers "could have been spared" images including an apparent recreation of the painting of The Last Supper of Jesus and his apostles in front of a fashion show.

UNITED STATES

"Opening Ceremony Misses the Boat" headlined the New York Times's television review.

It wrote that the river parade "turned the ceremony into something bigger, more various and more intermittently entertaining. But it also turned it into something more ordinary — just another bloated made-for-TV spectacle".

The Washington Post was more glowing, noting that the organizer's "bold thinking" brought a shine back to an event that has seen its popularity wane in recent years.

CHINA

China's Xinhua state news agency said the ceremony succeeded in showcasing France.

"There were Can-Can girls, a homage to the reconstruction of Notre Dame and of course the French Revolution, with fireworks, heavy metal and singers who appeared to have lost a battle with the guillotine.

"If there was a downside to the ceremony, it is that any event performed over such a long distance has to struggle with continuity, and the big difference between this ceremony and others is that the parade of athletes was mixed in with the performances."

SOUTH KOREA

South Korean media noted the "impressive" imagination of using the whole city as the backdrop but the event was overshadowed by the country's team being misintroduced as North Korea.

South Korea's CBS radio said while the incident was no doubt an honest mistake, it was disappointing the Paris organizers failed at what should have been a very basic part of the event.

GERMANY

"As beautiful as it was mad," wrote Germany's Frankfurter Allgemeine. "France revolutionized the opening ceremony ... by the end even the rain had been defeated."

Tabloid Bild was bowled over by Celine Dion's return to the stage after four years, defying illness to "sing just as in the best of times. She deserves a gold medal for this performance."

BRITAIN

British tabloid The Sun joked "Wet The Games Begin!" on its front page alongside an image of the Eiffel Tower surrounded by laser beams, and described the ceremony as spectacular.

The Daily Mail's headline read "La Farce!", mainly in reference to the train disruption earlier in the day, but the paper also judged Paris's gamble on the weather had "backfired spectacularly".

A writer for the Guardian newspaper described the parade of boats on the Seine as "like watching an endless series of weirdly nationalistic office parties" but concluded Celine Dion had rescued the event with a "jaw dropping" performance.

ITALY

La Gazzetta dello Sport said the ceremony was "something unprecedented, even extraordinary. A great show or a long, tedious work, depending on your point of view and sensibility."

The mainstream Italian newspaper Il Corriere della Sera likened the show to a contemporary art performance, noting that "some (spectators) were bored, others were amused, many found the spectacle disappointing".

The left-leaning Italian daily La Repubblica said the ceremony overshadowed the athletes.

"A lot of France, a lot of Paris, very little Olympics.... a mirror that the immortal Paris turned on herself and discovered that she was so much, too much and soaking wet".