Argylle film review — fiction and reality merge in this action adventure

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Matthew Vaughn’s Argylle fairly reeks of extravagantly mounted PR chicanery. This spoofy action adventure is supposedly based on a novel by Elly Conway, which is indeed on sale at your local bookshop. However, no one knows the identity of this elusive author (the filmmakers have denied the rumour that it is Taylor Swift). To complicate matters — or perhaps, simplify them — Elly Conway is the name of one of the film’s characters, an introverted thriller-writer played by Bryce Dallas Howard.

Argylle himself is an international smoothie and master spy, played by Henry Cavill with a bog-brush haircut and a Roger Moore smirk. He is first seen engaging in dancefloor manoeuvres with a gold-frocked femme fatale played by singer Dua Lipa, exuding a posh-accented ennui to rival anything in Saltburn.

All this proves to be a sequence from Elly’s latest bestseller. But just as she is trying to wrap up the sequel, she is intercepted by a real spy, played like a goofier bargain-basement Tom Cruise by the dependably watchable Sam Rockwell. He whisks Elly off on a journey of danger, accompanied by her beloved cat Alfie, whom she carries in an Argyll-patterned backpack — a shameless merch opportunity if ever there was one.

Fiction and reality merge frenziedly and altogether mechanically, as Vaughn and screenwriter Jason Fuchs pile up the switcheroos. For all its multi-layered clever-dickery, Argylle is essentially a single idea pursued at relentless pace and extravagant expense.

But it has its moments: most spectacularly, an action/dance sequence staged among billowing clouds in lurid Bollywood colours. And there’s some likeable acting from a game cast, including Bryan Cranston, Catherine O’Hara and the obligatory Samuel L Jackson. It’s all terribly self-regarding, and something of a rerun of Vaughn’s Kingsman adventures, though swapping that series’ blokey obnoxiousness for a tone of female empowerment. Howard and Rockwell visibly have a ball, though.

★★☆☆☆

In UK and US cinemas from February 2