Released in February of 2024, new action packed spy thriller “Argylle” follows author and writer, Elly Conoway (Bryce Dallas Howard) that writes books about a secret agent named Agent Argylle (Henry Cavill) as he tries to stop and uncover a secret global spy. But all of a sudden, the events in her books seem to be replicated in her life and she struggles to figure out what is real and what isn’t.
(Spoilers ahead)
The movie begins with Agent Argylle and he invades a nightclub in Greece while looking for a terrorist, LaGrange (Dua Lipa). As the two start to dance together, LaGrange tells Argyle that she knows why he is there and then she suddenly snaps, and her assassins point all of their guns at Argylle. As he is about to get shot, his accomplice Keira (Arianna DeBose), helps him escape. Argylle catches up to LaGrange and she starts spraying her gun at Argylle and she shoots Keira. I love the way that they started off the film because it got into action right off the bat and it reels in the audience right away.
Argylle is then told that he has to go chase LaGrange and that he has to leave Keira behind. He eventually catches up to her with the help of his friend Wyatt (John Cena) grabbing her off of her motorcycle. Wyatt and Argylle sit down to question LaGrange and she tells Argylle, “You and I are not so different, it seems we serve the same master.” So it turns out that she is working for the same person that also employed him, Fowler (Richard E. Grant). LaGrange then poisons and kills herself and that leaves Argylle confused and stumped.
The movie then transitions to a scene of Elly Conoway and the audience figures out that the whole opening scene was just the ending of the fourth book of the series “Argylle” that Elly has been writing. After Elly is done answering questions about her book at a convention, she goes back home to her cat Alfie and she tries to start to write the fifth book of her series. The way the movie transitioned from the opening scene to the one with Elly was perfect since there was a plot twist of the fact that the opening scene was just the ending of one of her books.
Elly wakes up the next day and her mom, Ruth (Catherine O’Hara) calls her. She says that she read the rough draft of Elly’s fifth book and that she liked it, but also said that the ending wasn’t that good and could be a lot better. So then Elly decides to take a train to go to her mom so that she can help her with the ending of her story. As she is on the train, she meets a guy named Aidan (Sam Rockwell) and he is acting like a fan of hers. As he is doing that, he soon tells her that she is being hunted and looked for by people that are on the train.
All of a sudden, a man comes up to Elly acting as a fan and wanting her to sign his book, but Aidan knows that he is one of the assassins acting in disguise. The film then has an action scene where Aidan is fighting off all of the assassins on his own while Elly is sitting back scared and confused about what is going on. As this is going on, she keeps getting visions of Argylle from her book, switching places with Aiden back and forth while he is fighting.
The reason for Elly being the target of these assassins is that her novels and the story of the novels come true in real life. Whatever happens in any of her books, it seems to become reality. This part is quite confusing at this time in the movie because for a while, the audience didn’t know why Elly was being hunted down by these assassins.
After Aidan is done fighting the assassins, he takes Elly with him and they jump off the train and he deploys his parachute. Elly passes out mid air and when she wakes up, she is in a random cabin and doesn’t know what happened.
From now on, Elly has to figure out her true identity, who she can trust, and plenty more. She has to figure out if AIdan is really trying to protect her or if he is with an association that is also trying to capture Elly. Later on, she faces a crisis where she finds out information about herself that she had brainwashed from her and this completely changes her.
I would recommend this movie to anyone who enjoys a thriller or a comedy. There is a lot of suspense, but there is plenty of comedy that is scattered throughout the film that gives it a lot of diversity. You have to pay attention to every single little detail to be able to understand the movie. There are little easter eggs all throughout that play a big part. In the end of the movie, you see Elly completely change as a person as she struggles to find out who she truly is. The movie was a little long, but overall the pacing was pretty good. I came into the movie not expecting much and after I watched it, it was about what I had thought it would be like.
3/5
