bad plaid

Star-studded spy film Argylle flops with bland fiction with absurd reality

Writer/director Matthew Vaughn started his career as a producer on films made by Guy Ritchie, and the majority of films that he’s helmed himself – ones like Layer Cake, Kick-Ass, and the Kingsman series – have had a anarchic feeling similar to those of his mentor. Vaughan’s latest, Argylle, doesn’t follow a lot of rules, and perhaps a bit more structure would have been beneficial.

Photo by Peter Mountain / courtesy of Universal Pictures, Apple Original Films, and MARV

Sam Rockwell and Bryce Dallas Howard in Argylle.

Elly Conway (Bryce Dallas Howard) is the successful author of a book series about the spy Argylle. When doing book readings or trying to write a new novel, she imagines the characters in a series of cutaway scenes featuring Henry Cavill, John Cena, and Ariana DeBose. Her rich imagination has earned her plenty of fans and, it seems, some enemies.

Her writing is so believable that a global syndicate, led by Ritter (Bryan Cranston) is convinced she knows too much about them and must be eliminated. Enter Aidan (Sam Rockwell), an agent sent by what he promises is the “good” side to protect her. Elly is pulled into a game of espionage that mirrors her writing in many aspects, with more than a few surprises along the way.

Vaughn begins the film with a very goofy sequence involving Elly’s characters, one that features some of the worst visual effects you’ll see in an action film. But when it’s revealed that the sequence is coming from Elly’s mind, it makes it seem as if the cheesiness and bad CGI is supposed to be that way.

That blending of reality and fiction continues through the rest of the film, never making it clear if Vaughn is in on the joke and trying to make a bad-looking film, or if he’s actually lost his touch. It’s easy to see many moviegoers just going with the flow and laughing it up at the film’s many over-the-top moments and various absurdities. But for this critic’s money, the film is too clever by half, giving the film’s many big stars a lot to do with nothing tangible with which to ground themselves.

If the film were played more straightforward, it might have a legitimate chance to be a decent spy thriller. But by going for laughs in almost every scene, Vaughn is asking a lot of his actors to play both serious and ridiculous at the same time. Some of them – Rockwell, Cranston, Cena, Catherine O’Hara – know how to balance things, but Howard is a bit out of her depth, and with her as the lead, it drags the whole story down.

Additionally, even though it’s likely a marketing decision and not a filmmaking one, the film’s character poster is one of the more misleading ones in recent memory. The film’s actual stars – Howard and Rockwell – are pushed to the back in favor of actors like Cavill, Samuel L. Jackson, and Dua Lipa, each of which have significantly less screentime (one shockingly so). Anyone expecting to enjoy those actors will likely be disappointed.

Argylle fits in with Vaughn’s recent films, but since his last two films were critically savaged, that’s not a good thing. Making a good action comedy takes more than just putting a lot of crazy stuff on the screen, and in the case of this film, Vaughn doesn’t know when to say when.

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Argylle opens in theaters on February 2.

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Movie Review

Denzel Washington brings new spectacle to the Colosseum in Gladiator II

Photo courtesy of Paramount Pictures

Paul Mescal in Gladiator II.

There are some films for which making a sequel is natural, and others where a follow-up is wholly unnecessary. Gladiator, which made both tons of money and was named Best Picture at the Oscars, told an impactful stand-alone story that ended with the protagonist dead and no real loose ends. And yet because there’s always more money to be made, here we are 24 years later with Gladiator II.

The lead character this time around is Lucius (Paul Mescal), a general in a North African army who becomes a prisoner of war when the Roman army led by Marcus Acacius (Pedro Pascal) bests him and his troops in battle. Taken back to Rome, he is put in the pool of captured men forced to fight at the Colosseum for the amusement of twin emperors Geta (Joseph Quinn) and Caracella (Fred Hechinger).

Lucius is controlled by Macrinus (Denzel Washington), an ambitious schemer who bets liberally on his prized fighter and always has an eye to move up in the world. Meanwhile, Lucilla (Connie Nielsen), the sister of Emperor Commodus from the first film, is now married to Marcus Acacius and has a unique connection with Lucius that is fairly obvious from the get-go.

Directed once again by Ridley Scott and written by David Scarpa, the film commits a number of sins throughout its 150-minute running time, the most blatant of which is that, aside from a few embellishments, it essentially tells the same story as the first film. Lucius, like Maximus, is a deposed military leader who’s out for revenge on the person who killed his family. Instead of one obnoxious emperor, there are now two. And the only way for Lucius to earn his freedom is to fight his way out.

Stories told in the same world can echo each other and, if done well, overcome those similarities. But Gladiator II is shockingly boring for a purported sword-and-sandals epic. Scott and his team try to introduce new elements to the fights, like a gladiator riding a rhinoceros or a ship battle inside the Colosseum (with sharks!), but most of the sequences are inert with no propulsion to them.

The action fails because none of the relationships in the film amount to much. There are stand-out characters like Macrinus and the twin emperors, but instead of creating antipathy or strong feelings of triumph or defeat, the story just kind of happens without any sense of excitement or importance. Much of that issue lies at the feet of Lucius, who simply doesn’t inspire in the same way that Russell Crowe’s Maximus did.

Mescal is a fine actor who’s done good work in more intimate roles, but he’s not up to the task of being an action star, at least not in this film. Any bombast he shows with the character feels forced, and the story doesn’t give him enough opportunities to counteract that lack. Washington, however, fills up the screen with his charisma, and it’s during his scenes that the film comes closest to being rousing. Quinn and Hechinger are a lot of fun as the twin emperors, but in the end they feel like retreads of Joaquin Phoenix from the original.

Any sequel should have a purpose that sets it apart from what came before, but Scott, Scarpa, and the rest of their team fail in that respect in Gladiator II. It’s a mostly lifeless film that delivers scenes that would be exciting if they had any kind of good story to back them up.

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Gladiator II opens in theaters on November 22.