 Argyle, the movie, was bad. But not nearly as bad as the book. Where to even begin? This book and movie adaptation situation was truly one of the most baffling and bewildering experiences of my life. I'm having trouble deciding if it would make more sense to start by talking about the book or by talking about the movie. Honestly, it won't really make sense either way. So I heard about the book first. And it was just like scrolling through my social media feed. My social media feed is book heavy. And the publisher had a promo for, you know, the upcoming new release Argyle. This cover is pretty snazzy. And the promo made it very clear that it was soon to be a major motion picture. I was like, whoa, what is this? I love doing books and movie adaptation type stuff. So I looked up the film, it looked intriguing, had a very promising looking cast. I hadn't heard about it before. It looked amusing and fun and kind of like campy. And yeah, it looked like a good time. That vibe and tone really appealed to me. So I preordered the book. When I went to mark the book as reading on Goodreads, I saw there were reviews mentioning that there's a conspiracy that the author, Ellie Conway, is in fact Taylor Swift. What? Never mind, we'll get back to that when we talk about the movie. As I did then, we're just gonna ignore that for now. So I start reading the book pretty much immediately, both because I was excited to read it. This looked like an exciting book to read. And because the movie would be coming out really, really soon after the book's release, which is unusual. And almost immediately, I was bored. I struggled with it for like a quarter of it. I'm debating, giving up on it entirely. And then in the nick of time, I hold for the audiobook from the library comes in. So I just like immediately get that and just plow through the rest of it. And the book is awful. Truly, if you've seen the film and you thought to yourself, well, the book must be better. It is not. I knew from the trailer for the film that there would be an author that writes spy novels and therefore gets involved in like real spy stuff. And I wasn't sure if that would be the case for the book. It's not. The book follows an astoundingly boring main character who on paper should be really fascinating and dynamic, which is a neat trick. The eponymous Aubrey Argyle is a young man. His parents were international drug smugglers. He didn't realize that was the business they were in until they died. And he left boarding school after their death, boarding school that was paid for by the drug money and is living now in poverty and obscurity in Thailand until one day a plane crashes nearby. And he helps the people, the victims of that crash, who happen to be CIA intelligence agents, which is how he comes onto the radar of the CIA. Meanwhile, in Russia, there's a very bad, very Russian man who's got evil coming out of his eyeballs. He's creepy. He's villainous. And did I mention he's Russian? The plot of the book is predominantly concerned with recruiting young Aubrey Argyle for the CIA, training him to be a CIA agent and joined the crew of young CIA agents that they've already got, a crew that is working on thwarting the evil plot of the evil bad bad Russian Russian man. So what is the evil sinister dastardly plot of the evil Russian baddie? Is it a huge bomb? Is it a biological weapon that he intends to use against the West? Is it some new technology that'll enable the Russians to take over the world? No. Our extremely juvenile and poorly trained CIA agents are risking their lives and some of them dying to stop the Russian presidential candidate from fulfilling his campaign promise to restore the fabled amber room to Russia. What is the amber room? In the 18th century, King Friedrich of Prussia commissioned this amber room, this amber-paneled room for his wife. It was constructed and was considered an eighth wonder of the world until World War II when the baddies looted and plundered the room and it has never been recovered. But they have since then made a recreation of it, but the original has never been found. So this presidential candidate is a far right extremist and the CIA is concerned that if he's able to succeed and actually restore the amber room to the Russian people that that's going to get him so much support and popularity that he's going to be unstoppable. And so they are sending these young and poorly trained CIA agents to try and find the amber room first so that the Russian presidential candidate can't find it and give it back to Russia. So this doesn't really seem like something worth killing and dying over, unless of course the amber room in this story has it's like an Indiana Jones style historical artifact. We're in addition to being treasure, it's got like magical powers. But no, it's just amber. Just culturally and historically significant amber. Anyway, our cast of bland cardboard cutout characters travel the world following very silly clues and solving very silly puzzles while the Russians are hot on their trail, so hot on their trail that one might begin to suspect that someone might be tipping off the Russians about their next moves. Cue the bee plot. See the CIA, they know that someone is tipping off the Russians, but they've decided that instead of scrapping this team, which is really inexperienced, I cannot stress that enough, and sending someone else on this really important mission. They're going to keep this team, but they're going to keep an eye on them to try to spot the mole in action. But our MC Argyle figures out that there's something up. There's some lip service paid to the fact that like he's got trust issues because his parents lying about the drug thing, but really he's just like a very, very special main character who just like so smart and perceptive and right place, right time to save the day and to notice things that are off and to put two and two together because that's our boy. So yeah, that's the book. A bunch of youngish, quite unprofessional CIA agents carrying out a very silly mission of stopping the Russian presidential candidate from finding some treasure that has cultural significance, all while the CIA is perfectly well aware that one of them is in fact a trader, but good guys win. Evil Russian baddies lose the end. Now to be clear, a silly plot like that would absolutely work for me in a book that was kind of like campy and tongue-in-cheek and maybe like spoofing the spy genre, you know, like having fun with it. But this book is so dull and so self serious that this terrible plot and terrible characterization are unforgivable, which brings us to So when I went to see the movie, I was still laboring under the assumption that there was a woman called Ellie Conway that had really written this book Argyle and that perhaps because of nepotism or whatever that this frankly crappy book got greenlit for a huge expensive movie. This by the way is the poster for the movie and this is Aubrey Argyle. So already I began to have doubts about this being an adaptation of the book that I just read. What I remembered from the trailer that I'd seen before reading the book, it did seem to have quite a different tone and vibe from the book that I just suffered through. So I was beginning to formulate a theory that perhaps the screenwriter, director, producer, whoever was handed the task of adapting this terrible book. And so they went with this plan that could be considered an adaptation on a technicality where like this actual spy novel sucks. So instead we're going to make a movie about the author of the spy novel being a spy and thereby we can claim that it's still an adaptation of this terrible book without having to adapt this terrible book. So anyway the movie opens with Argyle, Henry Cavill, in a campy over-the-top spy action sequence. It's fun, it's funny, it's ridiculous, and it's supposed to be so far so fine. But what this suave and buff British man who clearly works for something that's not the CIA has to do with the young, dull, boring, inexperienced son of drug dealers recruited by the CIA, I have no idea. So the movie's actual plot properly starts with a book signing, a book launch. Ellie Conway has just written the newest Argyle book, book four, and it's a big deal. She is a beloved author. Someone in the audience says during the Q&A portion that she has the reputation of being the spy novelist that real spies read. Even if I hadn't read this terrible, terrible book, that cold open with Henry Cavill would be enough to tell you that these Argyle books are not realistic. But having read this terrible, terrible book, the idea that there would be a devoted and loyal fan base anticipating her next novel is hilarious. And from there the movie's plot gets truly convoluted. I'm going to do my best to sum it up. Ellie is a successful author. Ellie has written several Argyle books. Ellie is working on the next Argyle book. Ellie has a cat. We'll come back to that. Ellie's mom reads her work and gives her advice on how to write. She's also worried about Ellie being single. Ellie's mom has read her latest manuscript. Ellie's mom thinks it needs one more chapter. Ellie is going to travel to see her mom so they can workshop the book. Ellie is afraid of flying. So Ellie gets on a train. Ellie meets Sam Rockwell on the train. Sam Rockwell is a big fan of the Argyle books. Sam Rockwell is reading the newest Argyle book. Sam Rockwell realizes that the person sitting across from him is the person on the dust jacket. Ellie Conway. Sam Rockwell is surprised. Sam Rockwell is not surprised. He knew that was Ellie Conway because you see Sam Rockwell is a spy, a real one. And he's here to protect Ellie Conway from the very real baddies that are after her. Chaotic action sequence ensues during which Ellie keeps hallucinating that Sam Rockwell is actually Henry Cavill or Argyle. Sam Rockwell explains that the baddies are after her because her books are scarily accurate to real life things that the baddies are up to. It's like her books are psychic. Sam Rockwell and the baddies need her to write the next part of the Argyle story because they think that will reveal where the movie's MacGuffin is. More chaotic action sequences one after the other during all of which Ellie is freaking out and also hallucinating that Sam Rockwell is Henry Cavill's Argyle. Ellie overhears Sam Rockwell telling someone over the phone that he's going to bring her in and he wants to kill her. Ellie flees. Ellie asks her parents to come and save her. Ellie's parents come to London. Ellie's father is revealed to be the head baddie who's been after her this whole time. Whaaat? Sam Rockwell bursts in and rescues Ellie from her parents, who are not her parents. Sam Rockwell takes Ellie to see Samuel L. Jackson. Samuel L. Jackson reveals that Ellie Conway is in fact Agent Rachel Kyle or Argyle. Argyle. Dun dun dun. Agent Kyle's memory was lost during an accident and then the baddies manipulated her mind and memory to convince her that she is actually the anxious nervous Ellie Conway whose parents are Evil Moira and Walter White. Ellie is shooketh. More chases and escapes, lots of reveals, lots of twists, lots of seeming betrayals and reversals. But all in all, Sam Rockwell and Ellie's real self were like a thing. Her memories coming back, they saved the day. Ellie, I mean Rachel, remembers liking Sam, and the baddies are defeated and everyone lives happily ever after. Okay, so what the heck did that have to do with this book? And why would the real Ellie Conway name her spy Argyle when that had no bearing on the plot whatsoever, but it was central to the twist in the plot of this movie? Also, why do people think that Taylor Swift wrote this? Okay, so I assumed there was some like really complex and compelling reasons for people to have crafted this theory that it was Taylor Swift who actually wrote this book, that she'd like put clues in her lyrics, that she'd said some kind of cryptic things that people had decoded and that it made it all sound like she was hinting that she was the author, but no. Remember the cat? Well, the trailer showed this cat in this carrier and you see Taylor Swift has a cat that's like that and she has a carrier for that cat that's like that. Also, Ellie Conway wears cardigans and you see Taylor Swift as a song called Cardigan. And then, of course, the adaptation of this book was green like crazy fast. So fast that there's like, gotta be a reason for that, right? And then the fact that social media profiles for Ellie Conway look suspiciously made up like they'd been put there last minute just to make it kind of look like there was a person called Ellie Conway. That's it. That's the evidence for Taylor specifically being the author in case it needs to be stated outright. Taylor Swift is not the author, but this is probably a good time to address the elephant in the room. I too have a cat and I too am wearing a cardigan. So I just want to take this opportunity to quash any rumors. I am not Taylor Swift. There is a post credit scene or mid credit scene, I guess. As I said, I was extremely baffled about this book to movie adaptation situation because they didn't seem to have anything to do with each other. And then the post credit scene or mid credit scene happens. And it's actually a scene that's in the book. This is literally the first scene in this whole thing that's from the book. A very, very young Aubrey Argyle, not Ellie Conway, who the movie just told us is the real Argyle because her name is Argyle. And that sounds like Argyle. No, no, no. The real Aubrey Argyle from the book. Having just lost his parents, the drug traffickers in case you forgot, he goes to a pub called The Kingsman. When I was reading the book, I did clock that, but I kind of wrote it off as like either a coincidence because like that Kingsman sounds like it could be a really generic name for a pub in England or alternatively that it was just like a fun little reference. Young Aubrey had been told by his parents to go to this Kingsman pub if there was ever a need. So he goes to the Kingsman pub and places the super secret order of a cosmopolitan with a twist but hold everything except for the twist. The barman gives him a box that has a gun in it and Aubrey is surprised and is like, that's a heck of a twist or something like that. So in the book, this is like a quick flashback about like what Aubrey did right after his parents' death. And in the book, when he's given the gun, he's like, nope, no thanks, no guns for me. And that's why at the beginning of the book, he's in Thailand living in poverty and obscurity. No money, no guns. But in this movie, after this scene is finished playing and he sees the gun and is like, what a twist, then the movie tells us that the next movie is going to actually be Argyle book one, the movie. And that that's gonna be about Aubrey Argyle. And that we're actually gonna be seeing this story then. What is going on? I felt extremely confused, baffled, bamboozled, misled, bewildered. If we're adapting this stupid, terrible book. Anyway, why did we start with this non adaptation? Well, so is there an Ellie Conway who wrote this? Like she must have put that Kingsman bit in there for the movie. Why? So I Google and it turns out that the movie came first. And then they commissioned someone to write this book as like a fun companion promo thing that would come out directly before the movie as like a tie into it. But they pretended like there was a real Ellie Conway. So they created social media profiles for this person named Ellie Conway. So that wouldn't like give away this whole twist situation. But there is actually going to also be a movie that is like this book. But I'm guessing that in the movie, Aubrey is going to say yes to the gun at the Kingsman pub. So then it can't really be like the book. But I guess he couldn't do that in the book because that would then the book would give away the twist of the movie. In conclusion, filmmakers, please never do this again. I am exhausted. This has been an emotional roller coaster that I did not sign up for. And the movie was bad and the book was worse. I feel like I've wasted so much time and emotional bandwidth on this whole thing. And I'm going to go have a nap.