Argylle panned by critics in brutal first reviews

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Early reviews for Argylle have began rolling in, and so they seem to largely be panning director Matthew Vaughn’s film.

The action-thriller, based mostly on the just lately launched novel of the identical identify – which some on-line theorists firmly consider was written by Taylor Swift – boasts an A-list solid of Dua Lipa, Henry Cavill, John Cena, Bryan Cranston and Catherine O’Hara.

Its plot follows the chaos that ensues after the occasions in a best-selling creator’s espionage novel start to reflect a real-life spy operation.

While The Independent’s chief movie critic Clarisse Loughrey was gentler in her three-star assessment, calling it a “silly spy romp” and “pleasingly, surprisingly charming”, a number of different critics had been fairly brutal.

“ARGYLLE is not only dreadful, its use of the Beatles’ ‘Now and Then’ nearly forced me to walk out of the theatre,” Roger Ebert’s Robert Daniels tweeted.

“Argylle Has a Big Secret: It’s a Stunningly Bad Movie,” reads the headline of David Fear’s assessment for Rolling Stone.

The Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw described the film as an “unbearably self-satisfied smirk of a spy caper”. “This could theoretically be a fun movie, but it is all so self-conscious and self-admiring, with key action sequences rendered null and void by being played on two levels, the imaginary and the real, so cancelling each other out,” Bradshaw added.

Nicholas Barber of the BBC known as it “shoddy and derivative Bond pastiche”, writing that “it’s a painful collection of silly clichés and unconvincing visual effects, but the twist is that it’s supposed to be like that”.

“Argylle is recycling ideas and imagery from better movies. It’s a loony adventure that lacks the grace necessary to match its stars,” IGN’s Jesse Hassenger wrote.

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“Flashy, fun and light on its feet, Argylle papers over its cracks with twist upon twist,” Ben Travis declared in his three-star assessment for Empire.

At the time of writing, the movie sits at 39 per cent on common assessment aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes.

Argylle shall be launched in cinemas on 2 February.