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Argylle. A reported $US200 million budget, a massive cast, and the director of X-Men: Days of Future Past, Kick-Ass, and Kingsman, Matthew Vaughn, at the helm. And this is the result.

I like the ambition here: a big blockbuster-style actioner with a lot of twists and turns. Argylle‘s plot relies on stitching together very familiar narratives in the hopes that it can provide something original and surprising. It’s a fair enough approach, I just didn’t find any of these plot strands particularly interesting or exciting. The reveals aren’t jaw-dropping in the way that they should be – it’s more, “Oh, we’re doing this now.” And at 2 hours and 20 minutes, Argylle is pretty tiring.

It’s an awkward action-comedy, that fumbles it on both action and comedy. The action: fun ideas, mixed execution, dragged out sequences, very obvious edits to make it PG-13, and really poor CGI (that cat). The comedy is goofy humour that rarely lands and instead makes for a pretty inconsistent tone.

It’s not all bad news though. Bryce Dallas Howards and Sam Rockwell are both quite good, and some of the colourful action sequences do have some creative moments to enjoy.