YMMV / Argylle

• Aluminium Christmas Trees: A cheesy work of fiction drawing enough parallels with actual national security operations to draw attention from the authorities has happened in real life multiple times before. TV shows like Get Smart and Mission: Impossible had the CIA starting asking questions because some of the fancy spy gadgets in the show resembled certain top-secret projects. Perhaps most famously, in the Superman story from Action Comics #83 written in April 1945, Lex Luthor built a weapon he named an "atom bomb" and threatened to use it on Metropolis. Since the name was so similar to the actual top-secret weapon that was tested on July 16, 1945 (and used at war the next month), the government-run Office of Censorship intervened and delayed the comic's publication until 1953. It also reportedly happened multiple times to Tom Clancy.
• Awesome Music:
  • Barry White's "You're the First, The Last, My Everything" already being the amazing R&B Ballad it is is perfect in underscoring first the bond that Argylle has with LaGrange during the opening dance scene—and then of course when Elly and Aidan reenact it later as well.
  • "Electric Energy" by Boy George, Ariana DeBose and Nile Rodgers is indeed quite an energetic treat, especially for disco lovers out there.
  • "Get Up And Start Again" is a beautiful, almost James Bond song-worthy showcase of DeBose's singing talent.
  • "Now and Then" is an emotionally powerful and melancholic song by The Beatles which plays repeatedly throughout the movie and is treated with fondness by a few characters. Aiden reminds Elly/Rachel that it used to be "our song" they regularly listened and danced to together years back as well (even though this shouldn't be possible).
  • “Run” by Leona Lewis, which is a beautiful and romantic song, played rather perfectly and beautifully during the Gun Fu Dance of Romance at the climax.
• Crosses the Line Twice: Aiden's insistence on Ellie crushing mooks' heads under her feet quickly ratchets up from disturbing to hilarious as he just. Keeps. INSISTING on it.
  Aiden: C'mon, it'll be fun!
• Ending Fatigue: One of the main criticisms is that the movie's climax drags on for a needlessly long time even after the all of the plot twists have been revealed or fully explained, with the heroes' plan to email the master file to expose the villains becoming increasingly convoluted and the inclusion of multiple lengthy, elaborate fight scenes just to pad out the runtime.
• Epileptic Trees: There's a real life Argylle novel, which is a Defictionalization of the in-universe book series published as a tie-in shortly before the film's release. The novel has been published under the pen name "Elly Conway", whose alleged biography is based on the film's heroine. Fans speculated about the author's real identity, some of them concluded they were Taylor Swift^note "Elly Conway" denied on her "official" Twitter account, J. K. Rowling, or Matthew Vaughn himself. Ultimately, the novel was revealed to have been written by British authors Terry Hayes and Tammy Cohen.
• He Really Can Act: John Cena shows a lot of good comic timing in his small role as Wyatt.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Ariana DeBose plays Keira in Argylle, which was released very soon after another film she starred in, I.S.S. (to the point that the two movies overlapped in theaters), in which she also plays a woman named Kira. (Spelled differently, but pronounced the same.)
• Ho Yay: Argylle is quite the lady-killer and, during the events of the in-universe book, dances with a Femme Fatale and gets a kiss from another beautiful lady. He also has a Heterosexual Life-Partner in Wyatt. This gets a gay twist with a late-film plot development: Argyle is actually Elly Conway's subconscious memories, and everything he did was her doing during her past life. Thus it is easy to interpret that Elly is at least subconsciously interested in women as well as men, if not having actively pursued them when she was R. Kylle. Relatedly, since Wyatt is a representative of her buried memories of Adrian, who she was in love with, the inverse (Argylle is in love with Wyatt) is equally easy to conclude.
• Memetic Hair: Henry Cavill's ridiculous haircut as Argylle (which is reminiscent of the one sported by Arnold Schwarzenegger in Red Heat or Eraserhead) has sparked much discussions.
• Narm Charm: The late-movie fight scenes, where Adrian and Elly blend dancing and figure-skating with fighting. It looks so dumb, but the choreography and special effects just manage to come together to make it an extremely fun kind of dumb.
  • Really, everything involving the eponymous Argylle has to count. Despite being over the top and ridiculous, it's still genuinely charming and endearing.
• Special Effects Failure: The CGI is extremely obvious in some scenes, in particular Argylle's car in the opening chase scene and the CGI version of Alfie the cat.
• Spiritual Successor:
  • Outside of the obvious Creator-Driven Successor thing with the Kingsman series, it could be considered one to The Long Kiss Goodnight. Both involve a seemingly mild mannered woman turning out to be an amnesiac with a past as an Action Girl - assassin in the former, spy in this - and assuming the identity of her former self is accompanied with a switch from long red hair to short blonde. Samuel L Jackson even starred in The Long Kiss Goodnight.
  • To the 1973 French comedy Le Magnifique with Jean-Paul Belmondo, which is also about a Spy Fiction author whose literary hero is an Author Avatar. Like Elly Conway, what François Merlin (the author) writes also takes the form of live-action adventures for his literary superspy, Bob Saint-Clar. What's more, what happens when Elly writes that impacts the text also impacts the live-action scenes, such as when she has a Writer's Block and Argylle stops dead in his tracks not knowing what to say next. There are similar scenes in Le Magnifique such as the "r" type of François Merlin's typewriter not working anymore, leading Saint-Clar to talk without pronouncing "r"s in words where he should.
• WTH, Costuming Department?: Agent Argylle himself is seemingly meant to be a suave, James Bond/Napoleon Solo-esque spy, yet he wears a full dark green velvet suit as well as a distinctive chop-top haircut that makes him look closer to the main character of Eraserhead or Ivan Danko than a charming secret agent. Arguably his appearance is meant to be silly (hinted as much as Dua Lipa's character) but it's unclear in the film itself why Argylle would appear like this in-universe, especially as we later learn Rachel Kylle, whom Argylle's adventures were directly based off of, wore no such outlandish get-up. Aidan also wears Argylle's signature suit and haircut later in the film on a mission with Rachel/Elly, and looks equally as ridiculous if not moreso than the fictional Argylle did.

---