ARGYLLE SUCKS

Okay, it doesn't totally suck; I just really wanted to use that headline.

Opening in theaters this weekend:

Argylle--For about the first half or so of this action comedy, our heroine Elly is pulled through chases and shootouts, squealing in girlish fright. Played by Bryce Dallas Howard, Elly is an author of popular spy thrillers featuring the flawlessly suave secret agent man Argylle, represented in her mind's eye by Henry Cavill.

One day on an Amtrak train she's accosted by Aidan (Sam Rockwell), a scruffy obnoxious guy who tells her that she's in grave danger, as her books are proving prophetic in real-world counterintelligence. Within seconds Aidan is defending her, and her put-upon Scottish Fold cat Alfie, from countless assassins in extended, cartoony hand-to-hand and gun combat, all the while dispensing reassurance and encouragement, and she's swept off into a globetrotting adventure.

You may recall that this was the central gag in the lame 2010 comedy Night and Day, with Cameron Diaz as the civilian and Tom Cruise as the hypercompetent and comically supportive secret agent man. Rockwell's woebegone manner is funnier and more agreeable than that of Cruise, but even so too much of this film feels derivative of previous spy parodies, both recent and vintage, from 2022's Bullet Train to the Mission: Impossible and Bourne flicks, and beyond. As in many of those films, the preposterously over-choreographed action scenes carry no real emotional weight, and I found the first part of the movie pretty tedious.

It started to grow on me after a while, though. The stars help; I've long been inclined to approve of Howard, with her lush pin-up beauty and her sweetness, and as Elly delves deeper into the case and gains more confidence, Howard is able to overcome the condescending hysterical woman stereotype she's forced to play along with early on. And she and the self-assured sad sack Rockwell play off each other nicely and without phony bickering.

The supporting cast is also top-notch; director Matthew Vaughn and screenwriter Jason Fuchs would have to work hard to prevent Bryan Cranston, as the fed-up evil kingpin, or Samuel L. Jackson as another spy boss, or the great Catherine O'Hara, pestering Elly to spend a weekend with Mom, from giving the audience any amusement. Along with Cavill's Argylle, the movie offers such overtly glamorous types as Jon Cena and Dua Lipa and Sofia Boutella and Ariana DeBose and Richard E. Grant, and they add another layer of drollery.

But just about the time I was loosening up and starting to think that Argylle was pretty good after all, it overplays its hand in the way of so many contemporary action blockbusters, shoveling one exhaustingly explosive finale after another at us. At two hours and twenty minutes it's at least thirty minutes too long. After a while you might start wondering if the movie has ended, and you're already a half-hour into Argylle 2.

GEAR FACTOR

Opening in the multiplexes this weekend...

Fast X--It has car chases. Just in case you were wondering.

In this, the tenth(ish) feature entry in the seemingly endless Fast and the Furious series about L.A. street racers turned freelance government agents, Vin Diesel and his pals are hassled through the streets of Rome, Rio, London, L.A., Portugal, etc. by a cheerful sociopath (Jason Momoa) with a vengeful grudge. It's lavishly and extravagantly produced, with a high-ticket cast, mostly playing characters from the earlier films.

The beauty and glamour and diversity of these people, including but not limited to Diesel and Michelle Rodriguez and Tyrese Gibson and Jason Statham and Nathalie Emmanuel and Daniela Melchior and Chris "Ludacris" Bridges and Jon Cena and Brie Larson and Sung Kang and Charlize Theron and, no kidding, Helen Mirren and Rita Moreno, if you please, is undeniable. Momoa is droll as the chatty villain. And even though the movie is overlong, the settings are sun-drenched and sumptuous, and I found it surprisingly less tedious than I expected to sit through.

But it's not cool. The many extended set-piece action sequences here are so preposterous that they make the James Bond flicks look like kitchen-sink realism. This silliness is not, in itself, what's pernicious about it, however. Even by action movie standards, Fast X is simply cavalier toward human life.

As with the earlier films, the message of this movie seems to be that it's nearly impossible to be seriously injured, or to injure a pedestrian, in a high-speed car chase through a densely-populated urban area. It suggests that cars can almost fly, and that people can almost fly between cars in midair, with surgical accuracy. It suggests that you have leisurely amounts of time to plan your maneuvers in a hurtling vehicle. It suggests that if you're thrown from a hurtling vehicle and land on pavement, you can get up and shake it off as if you'd tripped on a porch step. What this movie suggests that cars, and human bodies, can do and withstand is recklessly delusional, and to assume that it has no effect on the behavior of real-life drivers raised on movies like this seems naïve.

I don't want to be a killjoy. I've enjoyed many movie car chases over the years, and I enjoyed, albeit with a little guilt, some of this movie. But the Fast & Furious flicks take the seductive fantasy of invincible car action to a level that seems irresponsible to me. We hear a lot of complaints, from all quarters, about the negative influence of movies on, say, sexual morality, or racial perceptions, or the objectification of women, or toxic masculinity. Why can't the impact of movies on basic public safety be considered a moral issue?

SQUAD IS IN THE DETAILS

Opening this weekend...

The Suicide Squad--Sort of a Dirty Dozen for the comic book world, The Suicide Squad is a team of DC supervillains offered suicide missions in return for reduced sentences. The premise debuted in 1959 in the team-up title The Brave and the Bold, and was revived in the late '80s. It made it to the movies in 2016 as Suicide Squad; this sequel adds a "The" to the title.

James Gunn directed this darkly comedic adventure, in which the Squad, led by Bloodsport (Idris Elba) under the direction of Colonel Flag (Joel Kinnaman) and Amanda Waller (Viola Davis), invades a small South American country which harbors a sinister alien force. Wild gory violence ensues, making Deadpool look like Paw Patrol.

The film is self-consciously brutal and cynical, as well as foul-mouthed and sexually frank; as such it can at times feel a bit wearyingly like reading the nihilistic yet energetic poetry of an angry sixteen-year-old. Yeah, yeah, you may want to say, life sucks, got it.

Even so, there's a lot to like in the film. Elba, who wisely plays it very straight, is always good company, and Margot Robbie, back as The Joker's jilted, cheerfully lethal girlfriend Harley Quinn, is as endearing as ever. Peter Capaldi only has one really juicy scene as a mad scientist, but he makes it count, and Jon Cena is quite droll as gung-ho '60s-era superhero Peacemaker. My own favorite is lovely, kindly Daniela Melchior as Ratcatcher, who can communicate with and command rats the way Aquaman can lead the fish.

I also loved Starro, the giant, colorful cyclopean starfish that menaces the team in the movie's nutty climax. He strongly resembles the aliens from the 1956 Japanese sci-fi flick known in the U.S. as Warning from Space, but he's a lot less benign.