EXCLUSIVE

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, Wy