Argylle

Director: Matthew Vaughn
Year Released: 2024
Rating: 0.0

Elly Conway (Bryce Dallas Howard), a writer of pulpy espionage books, is having trouble coming up with an ending for the fifth entry in her Argylle series (which are "acted out" by the likes of Henry Cavill, John Cena, Ariana DeBose and Dua Lipa) when she's "rescued" on a train by actual spy Aidan (Sam Rockwell) because she's being targeted by an organization called The Division (led by Bryan Cranston) who believe she has access to incriminating data on them.  This $200 million dollar movie - which is loosely tied to the Kingsman franchise - operates on the premise that Elly can "predict future events" ... but what that actually means is that it literally and unapologetically makes up its preposterous "story" as it goes along (who cares about logic?), and abuses a hackneyed plot mechanism (that dreaded faulty memory!).  But the last act is where it becomes truly unbearable: there's a slo-mo dance/shootout (complete with multi-colored plumes of smoke), Elly "ice skating" on crude oil and then, for the final "confrontation," it has the audacity to borrow from The Manchurian Candidate.  If you told me that Alfie the Cat (not Samuel L. Jackson's character) wrote the script with his little paws, maybe then I'd have a bit of respect for it....