SECRETS & SPIES

ARGYLLE Kingsman’s Matthew Vaughn is taking a novel approach to the spy movie with this tale of an espionage author caught up in a dangerous game…

I just love spies and spy movies,’ grins Matthew Vaughn when asked why he’s opted to follow his Kingsman trilogy with another espionage extravaganza. ‘I wanted to make a different type of spy movie. This is so fucking nuts. And it’s a ray of sunshine. It just felt like an antidote – in spy-movie terms – to the crap that we were going through with COVID-19 and the lockdown.’

Based on a Jason Fuchs script that riffs on Elly Conway’s soon-to-be-published novel, Argylle is two-parts Bond and one-part Romancing the Stone. It creates meta-mischief mayhem as introverted spy novelist Elly Conway (Bryce Dallas Howard) finds herself parachuted into a real world of secret agents when the plot of her new book touches on authentic hidden truths. Head of an actual shadowy syndicate is Director Ritter (Bryan Cranston), and he’s not about to let some bumbling author shine her torch-pen into his dark dominion. And so Elly finds herself hunted by highly-trained goons, while good-guy spy Aiden Wilde (Sam Rockwell) emerges to guide her on a globe-trotting adventure.

Vaugn’s grin widens. ‘The whole movie is a concept of someone being the J.K. Rowling of spies – a world-famous author who’s writing book four [of a spy series revolving around debonair super-spy Argylle] when a guy comes up and says, “Hey, J.K. Rowling, you’re brilliant. But Dumbledore, you got the name wrong. And there’s a place just like Hogwarts that I want you to come see…”’

Only here’s the thing: Agent Argylle, the hero in Conway’s books, is played in the movie by Henry Cavill, and he has a partner, Wyatt, played by John Cena. Yep, Vaughn’s movie will not only hurl viewers through

Elly’s ‘real-world’ adventure, but immerses us in her fictional world, too. And in that land of make-believe there is, naturally, a variant of a Bond woman – enemy operative LaGrange, played by singersongwriter Dua Lipa.

‘I wanted to make a different type of spy movie. It’s a ray of sunshine’

MATTHEW VAUGHN

‘I needed someone where you just go, “OK, it’s a superspy. I get who you are”, so the journey begins immediately and everything is set in place for us to then start changing and rearranging shit,’ says Vaughn of casting Cavil as Argylle. ‘It’s the same reason [for casting Dua Lipa]. It’s the classic trope of what a female assassin in the Bond-esque world [is]. My kids introduced me to Dua’s music, and then I saw an interview with her and she wore this incredible Valentino dress that not many people could pull off. I saw that, and I listened to her being interviewed, and I went, “She can make it in movies.”’

And can the movie itself make it? Vaughn is a picture of confidence: ‘There’s some mind-blowing, cool shit,’ he laughs. ‘I really do love spy movies.’

ARGYLLE OPENS IN CINEMAS ON 2 FEBRUARY 2024.