Director Mathew Vaughn is known for directing action thrillers, as well as producing films alongside fellow director Guy Ritchie. The success of "Lock and Stock" (1998) and "Snatch" (Pigs and Diamonds, 2000) encouraged Vaughn to make the leap to directing with "Laker Cake" (Organized Crime, 2004), a mafia thriller in which he ran the risk of staying in the shadow of his friend was then when he decided to venture into fantasy cinema with 'Stardust' (2007) the brilliant adaptation of a story by Neil Gaiman which was followed by a superhero action comedy (Kick Ass: Shut up Kick Ass, 2010) and the film X-men: First Generation (2011) one of the best superhero movies. 

This would help turn another stylish Mark Millar comic into a franchise for the director of Kingsman: Secret Service: The Golden Circle, The King's Man and now 'Argylle' (2024) a spy novel, which has been a colossal and lumbering misfire structured as a cross between a Matryoshka doll full of shocking revelations and a partially undone knitted piece, resembling the rejected and incoherent cuts of the Kingsman series.

The narrative is driven by the question of who manipulates whom, though ultimately it's easiest to conclude that the script manipulates the viewer, in the film Elly Conway (Bryce Dallas Howard) is in the midst of writing the fifth volume of a series called: "Argylle," but the film begins with another quick bait-and-switch: a brief segment starring Henry Cavill as Aubrey Cavill as Aubrey Argylle, the Bond-like hero of Elly Conway's novels, and his villainous opponent, a faux-Bond played by pop star Dua Lipa. 

All this explains to some extent the puzzling existence of "Argylle" Conway, in fact: she has also been tricked: she is actually Aidan's colleague, a real spy named Rachel Kyle who was brainwashed by members of the Division, pretending to be Conway's parents, into her false identity as a novelist, and wrote her novels based on details of her own siege as a spy named Rachel Kyle, memories she had apparently repressed after an accident. 

The clues were all there: not only does "R Kelly" sound a bit like Argylle, but the last four letters of Argylle (and Kelly) spell "Elly" backwards. We can suspect why Elly Conway essentially wrote homoerotic fan fiction about herself by making her protagonist and her partner - boyfriend both male characters at a later date. The point is that Elly was always Argylle. 

This theoretically could be a fun movie, but it's all so self-conscious and self-admiring, with key action sequences turned null and void by being played on two levels, the imaginary and the real, so they cancel each other out, then the Argyllle book series 2 and 3 are highly arguable, - only one thought comes to mind: the series could be done much better. 

Argylle opens at the box office to mixed reviews and grossing $18 million, whereas Apple company has been releasing original films since 2019 and the production house won the Oscar for Best Picture with "CODA" in 2021, Apple has only recently released its own big-budget productions. The first two, Martin Scorsese's "Killers of the Flower Moon" and Ridley Scott's "Napoleon," have been relatively successful. 

"Killers of the Flower Moon," although it has not been as profitable, grossing $156 million worldwide, was one of the most lauded films of 2023 and was nominated for 10 Oscars. "Napoleon," released in November, has grossed $219 million worldwide, meaning it hasn't been profitable either. However, both have boosted Apple's reputation and prestige, but the same has not been true of "Argylle," perhaps because it is a complicated thriller featuring performances by Bryce Dallas Howard, Sam Rockwell and Henry Cavill. 

Note: "Argylle" was released with the idea of starting a new franchise, but controversy arose when Taylor Swift was rumored to be involved, as many diamonds and cats appear in the film: Despite Internet rumors. Swift had nothing to do with the movie.