There’s a moment in Argylle, the new Matthew Vaughn action spy comedy, where Henry Cavill’s titular secret agent smoulders at a nameless hot woman on the balcony of a luxury Hong Kong hotel and says “I’ll show you fireworks” before grabbing her into a steamy snog. Then, he pulls back, grimacing at his own clichéd corniness as his voice blends in with that of Bryce Dallas Howard’s Ellie Conway, the novel writer penning his every move.
You see, Agent Argylle is a fictional super spy, and one that seemingly has a chokehold on the espionage connoisseur community a la the characters of Ian Fleming or John Le Carre before him. He’s stylish, steely, British. All the good stuff. He can shmooze a sexy villainess and rev a car across the cluttered roofscape of a Greek island with equal effort, and always has the perfect, suave one-liner to throw in after vanquishing a foe. Essentially, Argylle is James Bond, just about 16 inches broader across the chest and with a weirdly tall haircut.
In the modern tenure of James Bond, whenever questions have been asked about who could take the reigns of the world’s most iconic secret agent, Henry Cavill’s name is close by. Back before Daniel Craig kicked off his stint with 2005’s Casino Royale, Cavill said he was down to the bottom two for the role, but was considered too young (he was 25 at the time). Since then, his name has orbited the top of every ‘most likely’ list, occasionally being muscled out by the hot new internet boyfriend of the moment. It’s not like Cavill has shied away from spy roles either – 2015’s The Man from U.N.C.L.E was basically like a portfolio piece designed to land across the desks of Bond producers.
But now, with Daniel Craig officially done with Bond, ironically, Cavill might be too old to finally land the role. Barbara Brocolli has said they’re looking for someone in their 30s to take over the mantel, and Cavill is just edged out at age 40.
It’s hard not to feel a bit sorry for Henry Cavill – as much as you can feel sorry for someone the size of a modest bungalow with a jaw carved from stone. He seems like an actor begging for some franchise stability, and his famous fumbles, like being axed from Superman just weeks after it was announced he was rejoining (and quitting The Witcher to do so), are turning into the stuff of legend. You’d be forgiven, then, for thinking that Argylle is yet another on-screen stab at the spy mould, something to pique the interest of Bond producers or, at the very least, land himself squarely in the spy oeuvre of Matthew Vaughn, the maximalist Wario to Bond’s slick Mario.
But Argylle isn’t that. In fact, it’s probably more of an anti-audition for Bond than anything resembling a job application. Sure, on paper, Cavill is hitting all the beats of 007, but he’s doing it with a wink and a nudge (sometimes literally at the camera). He’s also deliberately corny, and his flirty exchanges with women and his missions are over the top, ragging on the classic tropes we’ve come to expect from the spy genre.
Everything about Agent Argylle is supposed to make you laugh: His clothes are weird, even though we’re told they’re stylish. His hair is dumb, even though it’s meant to be cool. His game with the ladies is ick-inducing, even though it seems to work every time. And his scenes with Dua Lipa, which were heavily marketed in the run-up to release, are more comic than steamy. What looked like a sexy still of the pair, with Dua’s legs wrapped around Cavill’s face as he holds her suspended in the air, actually plays out like a full comedy about the gender gymnastics of spy movies. People thought Argylle was going to be Cavill playing a budget Bond, but actually, he was a parody of him all along.
With all due respect to Cavill, we’ve not really seen the actor have much of a sense of humour about the endless near-misses of his career. But with Argylle, he gets to playfully shrug at the almost two-decade-long conversation around his potential future as Bond without explicitly saying anything. Never say never, but at this point, Cavill will most likely never play 007 and he knows it. The cultural discourse continues to skew younger and more diverse, and he’s already essentially been booted out of the running anyway thanks to his age (the oldest Bond was Roger Moore, who started his stint at 45). He’ll probably never admit that, but thanks to Argylle, he doesn’t have to.