Oh, for the misplaced confidence of a Matthew Vaughn spy caper. With Kingsman, the Brit filmmaker made a franchise of a Nuts mag Bond movie with bum sex jokes, and judging by its sequel-baiting post-credit sting, there’ll be similar hopes for Argylle. It’d be a lot more than this cocksure but overlong and under-funny espionage action-thriller deserves. For all the efforts of a bang-on-form Sam Rockwell doing his best Jason Bourne, the endless CGI and half-developed ideas satisfy neither the eyes nor the brain.
The sorta-Hitchcockian premise – Bryce Dallas Howard’s successful spy writer gets taken for a real spy and Rockwell’s agent steps in to save her, while Bryan Cranston’s bad guys hunt her down – spawns plenty of twists, some of which make more sense than others. There are some showy fight scenes presented in the Vaughn house style (needle drops, slo-mo, more CGI). It all looks so ugly, though, and cries out for more jokes. Forget North by Northwest, this smug misfire goes south.
In cinemas worldwide Feb 2.
