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.



Video Game Performers Will Go on Strike Over Artificial Intelligence Concerns 

SAG-AFTRA signage is seen on the side of the headquarters in Los Angeles on Friday, Nov. 10, 2023. (AP)
SAG-AFTRA signage is seen on the side of the headquarters in Los Angeles on Friday, Nov. 10, 2023. (AP)
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Video Game Performers Will Go on Strike Over Artificial Intelligence Concerns 

SAG-AFTRA signage is seen on the side of the headquarters in Los Angeles on Friday, Nov. 10, 2023. (AP)
SAG-AFTRA signage is seen on the side of the headquarters in Los Angeles on Friday, Nov. 10, 2023. (AP)

Hollywood's video game performers announced they would go on strike Thursday, throwing part of the entertainment industry into another work stoppage after talks for a new contract with major game studios broke down over artificial intelligence protections.

The strike — the second for video game voice actors and motion capture performers under the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists — will begin at 12:01 a.m. Friday. The move comes after nearly two years of negotiations with gaming giants, including divisions of Activision, Warner Bros. and Walt Disney Co., over a new interactive media agreement.

SAG-AFTRA negotiators say gains have been made over wages and job safety in the video game contract, but that the two sides remained split over the regulation of generative AI. A spokesperson for the video game producers, Audrey Cooling, said the studios offered AI protections, but SAG-AFTRA’s negotiating committee said that the studios’ definition of who constitutes a "performer" is key to understanding the issue of who would be protected.

"The industry has told us point blank that they do not necessarily consider everyone who is rendering movement performance to be a performer that is covered by the collective bargaining agreement," SAG-AFTRA Chief Contracts Officer Ray Rodriguez said at a news conference Thursday afternoon. He said some physical performances are being treated as "data."

Without guardrails, game companies could train AI to replicate an actor’s voice, or create a digital replica of their likeness without consent or fair compensation, the union said.

"We strike as a matter of last resort. We have given this process absolutely as much time as we responsibly can," Rodriguez told reporters. "We have exhausted the other possibilities, and that is why we’re doing it now."

Cooling said the companies' offer "extends meaningful AI protections."

"We are disappointed the union has chosen to walk away when we are so close to a deal, and we remain prepared to resume negotiations," she said.

Andi Norris, an actor and member of the union's negotiating committee, said that those who do stunt work or creature performances would still be at risk under the game companies' offer.

"The performers who bring their body of work to these games create a whole variety of characters, and all of that work must be covered. Their proposal would carve out anything that doesn’t look and sound identical to me as I sit here, when, in truth, on any given week I am a zombie, I am a soldier, I am a zombie soldier," Norris said. "We cannot and will not accept that a stunt or movement performer giving a full performance on stage next to a voice actor isn’t a performer."

The global video game industry generates well over $100 billion dollars in profit annually, according to game market forecaster Newzoo. The people who design and bring those games to life are the driving force behind that success, SAG-AFTRA said.

Members voted overwhelmingly last year to give leadership the authority to strike. Concerns about how movie studios will use AI helped fuel last year’s film and television strikes by the union, which lasted four months.

The last interactive contract, which expired in November 2022, did not provide protections around AI but secured a bonus compensation structure for voice actors and performance capture artists after an 11-month strike that began in October 2016. That work stoppage marked the first major labor action from SAG-AFTRA following the merger of Hollywood’s two largest actors unions in 2012.

The video game agreement covers more than 2,500 "off-camera (voiceover) performers, on-camera (motion capture, stunt) performers, stunt coordinators, singers, dancers, puppeteers, and background performers," according to the union.

Amid the tense interactive negotiations, SAG-AFTRA created a separate contract in February that covered independent and lower-budget video game projects. The tiered-budget independent interactive media agreement contains some of the protections on AI that video game industry titans have rejected. Games signed to an interim interactive media agreement, tiered-budget independent interactive agreement or interim interactive localization agreement are not part of the strike, the union said.