From the twisted mind of Matthew Vaughn (Kingsman franchise, Kick-Ass) comes Argylle, a razor-witted, reality-bending, globe-encircling spy thriller.

Bryce Dallas Howard (Jurassic World franchise) is Elly Conway, the reclusive author of a series of best-selling espionage novels, whose idea of bliss is a night at home with her computer and her cat, Alfie. But when the plots of Elly’s fictional books—which center on secret agent Argylle and his mission to unravel a global spy syndicate—begin to mirror the covert actions of a real-life spy organization, quiet evenings at home become a thing of the past.

Accompanied by Aiden (Oscar® winner Sam Rockwell), a cat-allergic spy, Elly (carrying Alfie in her backpack) races across the world to stay one step ahead of the killers as the line between Elly’s fictional world and her real one begins to blur.

The top-flight ensemble cast features Henry Cavill (The Witcher), John Cena (Fast X), Oscar® winner Ariana DeBose (West Side Story), Grammy winning pop superstar Dua Lipa (Barbie), Emmy winner and Oscar® nominee Bryan Cranston (Breaking Bad), Emmy winner and comedy icon Catherine O’Hara (Schitt’s Creek), Sofia Boutella (Kingsman: The Secret Service), and the legendary Samuel L. Jackson. Alfie is played by Chip, the real-life cat of supermodel Claudia Vaughn (née Schiffer).

Argylle is directed and produced by Matthew Vaughn, from a screenplay by Jason Fuchs (I Still See You). The film is produced by Matthew Vaughn, Adam Bohling (Kingsman franchise), Jason Fuchs, and David Reid (Kingsman franchise). The executive producers are Adam Fishbach, Zygi Kamasa, Carlos Peres and Claudia Vaughn.

Apple Original Films presents, in association with MARV, a Cloudy production. Argylle is distributed by Universal Pictures.
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The story revolves around technology while actually using very little of it. All the top secret British Intelligence agents have been outed and are now useless so they have to recruit some of the old school spies and put them back into the field. This gives the exiled Johnny English (Atkinson) a way back in. It also leads to a wonderful scene with a surprise trio of classic English acting veterans who unfortunately meet a quick demise as a result of English and his blundering ways.

Casting Bond girl Olga Kurylenko as the main nemesis of English is a clever choice as her calm glamour contrasts nicely with Atkinson’s bumbling ways. Emma Thompson’s comic turn as the Prime Minister is also a pleasant surprise. The globe trotting nature of spy films is featured and there are some interesting locations, but only if you find Scottish Castles exotic.

There are a large number of ongoing gags, which is a good thing as the hit to miss ratio is a little bit underwhelming. The filmmaker’s have also used that dubious computer generated imagery of things being blown up, you know the stuff that looks totally unrealistic? Come on guys, the film had to have had at least enough budget to build a few models to blow up.

Rob Hudson
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Jennifer Lawrence delivers her bravest performance yet and adds another outstanding job to her ever expanding resume of excellence. As an actor, she endures almost as much pain and shows as much commitment as her character does on screen.

The film slowly builds and builds, so viewers looking for that quick visceral thrill might have to look elsewhere but for those that revel in playing arm chair detective themselves, will find much to love as the clues unfold. When the final reveal comes it makes you reassess all that has come before.

Red Sparrow harkens back to a time when you could challenge an audience’s intelligence and detective skills before attention spans recessed and action became the dominant form for spy movies. All this psychological action and not a martini, shaken or stirred in sight.

Rob Hudson
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It’s an odd universe that super spy and everyday pom Eggsy (Taron Egerton) had returned to. He’s made good as a Kingsman and has a successful relationship with Princess Tilde (Hanna Alström) even though it’s against company policy. His world is turned upside down when super baddie Poppy (Julianne Moore) reeks havoc on the secret affiliation.

All of the over the top tendencies are not only keep intact from the first film but with a bigger budget and more ambition, they are ramped up considerably. Even suspected dead are revived. Oh and for those wondering, the extremely juvenile bouts of humour and comic book special effects are revisited extensively.

If you loved the first Kingsman, you will have no issues with the second but for the newbies, this is a world where anything goes. It stays true to the level of unsophisticated comic book humour with its sense of grandiosity. It fires fun square into the heart of the young and young at heat.

Rob Hudson
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As an action piece, it gets the job done but as a proper Jason Bourne movie, it’s quite the disappointing experience. Gone are almost all the clever ways Bourne can extract himself from trouble and in their place are just Teflon walks in the park. Moments where no real menace can really stick.

He gets out of almost every jam with just brawn and no brain. Julia Stilles is very much underutilized as well and sadly exits early and takes with her the only character that links Bourne to a friendlier past. In the place of proper story telling are a series of spectacular action sequences that not only strain the law of physics to their breaking point but also tend to wear the viewer out. Pokemon Go

If this edition reignites the franchise that will be a good thing because Matt Damon fills this role splendidly when given something to really sink his teeth into. Next time out let’s hope for far more intrigue and much less outlandish action.

Rob Hudson
www.jasonbournemovie.com.au

Firstly this edition, Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation puts storyline characterization on the back burner as it ramps up the action. These are real live stunts, not ones dependent on CGI and as such the film’s action sequences provide the big bang factor. In comparison to the film’s main rivals, the Bond and Bourne franchises, having Cruise on board with his bravery on overdrive creates some extremely crazy moments to view.

This approach makes for an at times spectacular experience but this rush towards visual stimulus instead of strong characterization does the film no favours in between stunts. Some of the cast’s assets are underutilized. Simon Pegg’s humour is mostly absent and the chemistry between Cruise and female lead Rebecca Ferguson is weak at best. Also one of the best bad bosses in the business, Alec Baldwin is not given much to work with.

The overall effect of this type of film making leads to a lot of wow moments but it does leave you wanting a bit more. It is spectacular to look at but untimely not very memorable.

Rob Hudson
www.missionimpossible.com

Feig may have inadvertently stumbled upon McCarthy’s limitations, however, as his star is strangely the least funny character for at least the first half of the movie. This is because for the first half of the film McCarthy is playing the ‘nice girl’ and ‘nice’ McCarthy just isn’t very funny. Fear not, though, when Rose Byrne’s villain enters the picture, McCarthy gets a sparring partner and enters ‘hard arse’ mode and hard arse McCarthy is very funny indeed.

In the comedic void that is the first half of the film, the best comedic performance surprisingly comes from action star, Jason Statham, reminding us of his big screen debut in Guy Richie’s popular and funny Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. It’s a welcome return to comedy for Statham; a turn that we’ll hopefully see more of amidst his well established action career. But Statham features only sporadically throughout the film so in the absence of any solid comedy in the first half, it makes for a fairly pedestrian opener.

Performances from the rest of the cast which include Jude Law, Allison Janney (strangely uncredited), Miranda Hart and Morena Baccarin are merely adequate and add little to the comedy quotient.

Spy is an uneven comedy. While all the cylinders may fire at one time or other, they never fire together. It’s as if there were a ‘funny stick’ being passed around the set preventing more than one character being funny at any given time. This combined with a lack of a binding spiritual soul (which made Bridesmaids so successful) means that there’s little in Spy to be emotionally engaged with.

Stuart Jamieson
 www.foxmovies.com

Helen Mirren, John Malkovich, Brian Cox, Mary-Louise Parker and Bruce Willis reprise their roles from the previous film and this time they’re joined by Anthony Hopkins, Catherine Zeta-Jones and Asian action star, Byung-hun Lee. As the central and most-grounded character, Willis is almost boring; instead the flash and colour is supplied by the peripheral characters and, as before, Mary-Louise Parker remains the heart and soul of the film

The plot? It has something to do with a weapon of mass destruction but really who cares about the plot! We just want to see Ms Mirren with a sniper rifle and a sly smile, a crazy-eyed Malkovich wielding explosives and unique hats and Parker’s crooked smile. On this score, Galaxy Quest director, Dean Parisot, delivers just about what is expected.

If you’ve seen and enjoyed the original Red then strap in as you’ll have fun with this one as well. It does follow the same tried and true formula as before and while there’s few surprises, it is still is a big bag of rollicking fun.

Stuart Jamieson
www.hopscotchfilms.com.au