The morning of Saturday 3rd February was a terrible series of events, two mainly. One was a car issue where fortunately no harm to the car or anybody or anything took place but was still an unnerving and effecting situation for me. However prior to that I watched the motion picture Argylle and although in all seriousness I would never claim that one was worst than the other, I cannot underestimate how gruelling, miserable and excruciatingly frustrating the viewing of Argylle was before any of the car issues of that morning. Argylle may very well the most awful viewing experience of my cinema going life. I say this without hyperbole. I say this with sincerity. Argylle is cynical and clinical trash that reflects the very worst of current movie-making and is a film I openly despise and had a genuine visceral reaction to when I heard my first positive critical opinion on it. For I really do have no concept, have no clue, have no grasp on how any respecting movie watcher or even passive movie watcher can watch this and not see the most trite, dumb, ill-effective and cynical conflation of tired tropes, god-awful CGI and an overwhelming feeling that the whole thing was developed by broken AI.
There are worse films. Kids with movie cameras, low budget horror trash, Netflix or Hallmark Christmas films perhaps. But when a film has many of the best actors working today and has a budget of a reported $200 million (and the rest) and this is your final product, frankly, I don’t know how somebody can’t be ashamed of this as their final product. I remember when I wrote a negative review once back when my mum used to read these pieces and she told me that I should be careful what I write, afterall I myself hope to be an actor, writer and director, however I have never lied in these reviews, nor can I lie here when I reflect that this is a piece of work that I find truly abominable. To build your entire marketing campaign around a twist that is revealed to anybody who is listening in your first line of dialogue is frankly embarrassing. The opening dialogue after the atrocious prologue outlines with painful sledgehammer subtlety how the ultimate twist of this film is going to play out and I dare say that every other twist in this film plays out exactly as one would expect it to also. I never say these things to shame into stupidity those who didn’t see these shifts coming, but in this case I find the whole beleaguered and painfully extended marketing campaign for this film put the twists on such a high pedestal that how could one not have anticipation for them? I admit it, I fell for it. I’d call it more Stockholm syndrome after watching the trailer for what felt like an eternity and learning it beat for beat and line for line, I too had my theories, but to have your actual film be so obvious is again, for me, embarrassing. The whole film for that matter is wickedly empty of inspiration and vision. The script unfolds with the flow of dried concrete and every actor involved is fighting against the tide to attempt to make this film in any way enjoyable for the audience, thus making their attempts grow more and more annoying in turn also. But beyond the writing the film too is a mess, a visually uninteresting frankly shameful CGI swamp of tripe. Not a single action beat or sequence worked for me, no matter how many great songs you use to hype the mood or add humour in the juxtaposition. Not one thing felt real and the possible humour and invention found in clashing the real world with the fake world is lost because everything looks and feels the same and it all looks and feels atrocious.
In regards to
originality, are we really going to let another film steal the basic set-up of Romancing
the Stone and not even once name-check it in promotion or material? This
and The Lost City, both were shameless in that regard for me. But that
is the last I will mention that film in comparison afterall that now looks like
Die Hard in comparison to this. Die Hard, which allegedly this
film is an ode to for Mathew Vaugh and his “twisted mind” – which with that
trailer title card remains by the way the biggest laugh I’ve had with this film.
But what made Die Hard a success was a series of different things that
one after another this film brutally fails at; believable and enjoyable
characters who we enjoy spending time with and fear when they are in danger.
Not only do I not believe anybody is in danger in Argylle, but I don’t
like any of these people enough to worry if they are in danger. I love all of
these actors and yet I didn’t enjoy a single moment with any of them, I have
never seen frankly a film suck the essence out of so, so many brilliant actors.
Another Die Hard success of course would be tangible and realistic
violence that furthers the plot and builds stakes – which is the most polar
opposite point film to film, here even the cat is CGI and it would be to my
great surprise if much of anything on display was real and even if it is real
it sure as hell does not look as such in the final product. But of course
perhaps Die Hard’s greatest success is its perfect script that builds
and builds with incredible skill and deftness to an ultimate conclusion and
never once outstays its welcome. I honestly have never felt a longer 2hr 19min
in my life. This was excruciating. Argylle may very well be the first
worst film of the year and remain that way to the very end.
I think it may very well have to be 2/10. I want to give it 1/10. If it was out of 5 it would be a 1, I guess that makes it a 2/10. Either way. I really do think that may very well be the worst film I have ever seen in a cinema. There are worse films, of course there are. But in what world when you have $200 million and some of the greatest actors we have working, do you make such an overlong, empty and atrocious piece of work. Not one single element of this film works in a way that someone could whole heartedly say was successful. “From the twisted mind of Mathew Vaughn” comes a twisted attempt to make a film that screams how fun it should be over and over again and yet one feels nothing, other than annoyance, extreme anger and unsettling unbelievability at how such a film as this really could have been worse than the atrocious trailer I had to watch an ungodly amount of times.
I would however now like to offer a supplementary 10/10 conclusion for a different element of the film, before concluding with a post-script on how terrible even the post-credits scene was.
In a film that has one of the most cynical and stupid uses of a song in recent memory with the use of The Beatles Now and Then, which feels in so many ways as AI and diluted as this film was. “This was our song”, it came out four months ago for f*cks sake. HOWEVER… I give 10/10 to Electric Energy, the films sole original song which is only deployed for a chorus during an awful fight scene and about a minute or so during the credits. Nile Rodgers, Boy George and Arianna DeBose have made a genuine disco banger that the entire film should take notes on; for one it blissfully doesn’t outstay its welcome and is a perfect usage of its run-time, utilises its entire crew and has a genuine and exciting vibrancy to it that doesn’t feel in any way forced and clinical. Although it is perhaps not wholly original, it is by no means anything but a great track and a good time and certainly the only saving grace of the film it is trapped within.
P.S. That may very well be the worst and most baffling back to back of an awful ending and stupendously confusing mid-credits scene I’ve ever viewed. To have one open ending that I am certain will go nowhere is one thing, but to then follow that up with a further mid-credits scene that is also just as baffling and genuinely confusing is another thing. I will eat my shoe if either project surface or rather I will watch them in the cinema, which I have no doubt will be a more than sufficient punishment enough.
- - Thomas Carruthers
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