Argyle



Yes, it's true. Most movies during the Biden administration have been a:
1. Remake.
2. Reboot.
3. Corporate Biopic.
4. Marvel movie.

And there is some merit to that. I am a Millenial, so I feel this way.

Movies like ARGYLE justify that list's existence. Perhaps we are better off with the Marvel universe.

I put this movie at the bottom of my list, to be clear. Under FOUNDER'S DAY (I am going to have a rank of all the movies I review at the end of the year).

How are these movies alike, though?

Well, these, my dear, are original scripts. They are not based on any prior film, or on a “true story”. This used to be something to be excited about.

Now, it often means you had half of an idea.

ARGYLE isn’t as cheaply made or amateurish as the aforementioned films, but for that reason, it also makes it that much worse. When I say that this movie isn’t cheap, I mean to say it cost 200 MILLION - the same amount that went into KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON. What the fuck???????????????????????????????????? I suppose that price comes with some kind of deal for a second and third installment, which was alluded to, and of course it was!!! at the end of the film. I wouldn't watch a follow up to this movie for free. You'd have to pay me.

I have Regal Unlimited, by the way now, so this only cost me 50 cents to see. My point remins.

At least FOUNDER’S DAY was fun to watch in it’s campiness. I have a big enough heart to give a low-budget thing some leeway.

Listen to me, already nostalgic about early-early 2024, when I could see light horror movies like NIGHT SWIM.

Anyways.

I saw the trailer for this movie what feels like a dozen times since like November. It's the same guy who does those KINGSMAN movies, which I have never seen, but their trailers have the same vibe. Are those good movies? The vibe of them have always been like... A guy with a monocle or something.

Argyle has a pretty alluring trailer, I'll admit. But I fucking love trailers. I could probably sit through a a bunch of these PG-13 comedy-ish “action” trailers like this, where every punch and kick is edited to the beat, and it flashes a bunch of A-list names super fast. John Cena! Dua Lipa! A kitty kat (You’ll be disappointed to hear that none of those people mentioned are in it for more than five minutes. If that disappoints you, well... I hate to be the one to tell you about the kitty cat)! That sounds more fun, like an hour and a half of trailers. I remember after the GRINDHOUSE double feature in 2006/07, Eli Roth started drafting a movie that would solely consit of fake trailers. I still love that idea. Hey, I'm digressing again!

Speaking of hour and a half, this movie is 2 hours and 15 fucking minutes!

At least getting the tickets was easy. Ben and I decided earlier that afternoon via text that we would be seeing Argyle, as it was the only release from this past Friday. His girlfriend Liz, also known as my friend Liz would be joining us as well. I try not exceeding two people for any movie viewing, but Liz was an exception, because for one, she is cool to hang out with, and because two, it would have been weird if I had told Ben that she couldn’t come.

Using the Unlimited Pass for the first time made me feel like some kind of boss mode type dude - I mean, getting to see a movie for free (there is a 50 cent fee per movie, by the way, which is apparently waived if you are actually purchasing your tickets at the box office the day of, which defeats the purpose of having the mobile app slightly) - this was always my dream. I’m not sure why it took me to long to bite the bullet on getting it. This was movie number 6 for me this year so far. I saw five films in the month of January, and each ticket was $8.80 - Unlimited is $24 for the whole month - I would have saved twenty dollars if I had just purchased it then. If seems as if I’m trying to sell you on Unlimited, I kind of am! And if anyone at Regal headquarters happens to read this, I will do a lot more than try to sell people on Unlimited, if you give me a free annual pass to any movie for the remainder of 2024. I will threaten people with violence if they refuse to become members. Anyways!

The showtime was for 6:10, which meant the movie would be starting around 6:35 (enough of this). We met there approximately at 6:10. I have been trying to push back my own timeframe a bit. I am known to be punctual, and often it is to my detriment. I will show up on time (early), and then be disappointed when my friends are late to things - and the majority of them are often, like... really late to things. But Ben and Liz are always on time, and in this case, they beat me there.

We made it in time for trailers, which I always look forward to, but I’ll be honest, I can’t stomach sitting through seeing Bob Marley say "One Love" in the "Bob Marley: One Love" trailer, or the one about the sexy tennis player and her love triangle with two other sexy tennis players.

Anyways. ARGYLE. Lol.

Remember those e-cards on Facebook that people would send eachother in like 2010? It would say something like “My first language is sarcasm. My second language is tacos.” Or something like that.

This movie felt like it was written for those people who enjoy those kinds of things.

ARGYLE is an action-comedy film about Ellie Conway, an esteemed author of a series of espionage-y fiction called ARGYLE (That’s why it’s called that. I feel like everyone thinks the cat shown in all the ads is named ARGYLE as well. He isn’t). Her books follow a spy named ARGYLE (That’s why it’s called that).

Ellie, played by Bryce Dallas-Howard, is a single, happy-to-be-alone woman in Colorado somewhere, enjoying solitude from the success of her books, hanging out with her 80-percent CGI’d cat, Alfie. She lives in Colorado, and she looks like it, too... Like one of those people who would share one of those e-cards on Facebook. I have little to say else about her. I often feel this way about the star of a movie when they are miscast.

While on a train to visit her parents, she is attacked by a bunch of spy type jerks. To her rescue is a bearded spy good-guy, Aiden, who is played by Sam Rockwell (which for some reason, when I saw the trailer, I totally thought this was Will Forte, to the point that I told a bunch of people that I was seeing it for this reason. I am a fucking idiot, seriously!!! Will Forte is not in this at all). Aiden explains, via exposition (THERE IS A LOT IN THIS MOVIE!), that all of the things that she has written in her fictional books, is happening in real time, in spy-bad-guy-world. It is up to her to write book number five with a good ending or something like that, so that the bad guys don’t catch them and end the world, or something or rather. I don’t know what the bad guys are exactly up to here. I noticed around this point that Ben was ordering socks on his phone via Amazon.

There is so much exposition in the film that it’s hard to figure out EXACTLY what’s on the line. But there’s also so much CGI’ed action that it’s hard to give much a shit, anyways.

Spoiler alert is that it turns out that Ellie was formerly a CIA Spy type person and all the books she wrote were true stories, awwww! Because she got hurt and put in the hospital, and then the bad guys convinced her that she was another person, and told her to write down all of her thoughts in her journal, which most of the journal entry stuff was planted there to make her think that she actually wrote it, so she started writing all this shit down that was her memories, unbeknownst to her, so the bad guys could try to figure out where something important was in the world, or something like that.

Even the exposition happens fast, as if the director doesn't want you to notice how stupid something is, and tries to refocus your attention on the next thing.

The last thirty minutes have a twist what seems like every few minutes, and at this point you've given up who's the goodguy or badguy (Spoiler alert the goodguys were the main characters all along. Who knew???)

Bryan Cranston plays the baddest guy here - who cares. He isn’t doing anything beyond Cranston crap here, and you knew that. He has always been annoying to me, ever since that show. Maybe you think I like Breaking Bad or something? I don’t. You are supposed to like that though, if you are seeing this, because he is here solely for the cameo aspect, so he can act scary or something. I only like him in MALCOM IN THE MIDDLE, OK? He doesn't play these kinds of characters as well as the casting people seem to think. Here, he is calculating, at best. But I get it. I'm sure the Facebook audience could get roped in with a Cranston credit in the trailer.

Samuel L. Jackson plays one of the goodguys and another I-really-don’t-give-a-shit. Throwing him in the movie only makes sense as a reason to put him in the trailer, jamming him in the middle of the cast of A-list people that simply aren’t good enough to add merit to this thing.

The things that could be good here, specifically the meta type of stuff, the movie-within-a-movie, don’t happen enough. There are scenes in the trailer that show John Cena pulling Dua Lipa off a motorcycle, which are scenes happening in the series that Ellie has written. I like shit like this. I looked forward to more of this, but I realized that Cena wouldn’t be coming back on the screen after like the ten-minute mark, and I felt a little duped. I would rather watch the fictional ARGYLE than the one we are watching.

It just pisses me off!!! I blame the PG-13 rating. It is the most horrible rating of them all. Are there really fifteen-year-olds that are excited for ARGYLE (besides on Regal Tuesdays, of course)???

Not to mention, Rockwell’s character murders hordes of random guards and imps with gunfire. Murder to me always registers as an R-rating type of thing, but I guess it’s okay for teenagers to see because the movie is just so AUGH! Fucking stupid!

The PG-13 rating should be done with. Like, it's literally put here so Bryce Dallas-Howard could say fuck in the film one time? And then I’m sitting there in the theater, going “well, there’s the one 'Fuck' for the movie.” In PG-13 movies, the rating distracts me like crazy, because I can see where it becomes creatively limited, often to its detriment. If this was rated PG, with milder violence (no killing), and only a couple of Damn's, I probably would have been more lenient. This is just your typical PG-13 rated movie made for 45-year-olds.

BORING! Just boring. No need to watch it. There isn't good action, there's never a laugh, that I can remember. And again, the cat is barely in it at all! I'm not even a cat person, but I like this cat for some reason.

Below are a few images I took after the film. I took an hour-long walk downtown. It was a nice evening out, a little brisk, but one of those tolerable February nights that can only exist in February. Sure the movie was a bad, shitty movie - but, just a movie. I am grateful for my life. I look forward to nights like this. I have been a cinema-head since I was just a young fatkid with a drivers license. I'd see a movie in theaters every Friday night with a handful of friends. After, we'd drive around in my car, and listen to CD's I burned from iTunes, like DYSTOPIA and INEPSY. We would talk about movies THE EXPENDABLES or NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET (Remake). We would drive around the middle of Missouri, complaining about the movie, complaining about jobs, complaining about skateboarding. And still, that remains true! Look at me now, bitching about ARGYLE!

Thanks to all read this crap.

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