Headscratchers / Argylle

• Why does Elly conveniently fall heavily asleep for several travel scenes? And how do you drive from England to the far side of France with no documentation and without waking up a sleeping woman?
  • For the first one: Long distance travel is extremely boring and Elly is under a lot of stress, both of which can make it very easy for someone to fall asleep. As for the latter, who's to say Aidan didn't have fake documentation or just bribed the officials? (though the latter is not easy to do in France in Real Life)
• As mentioned on under Foreshadowing on the main page, Elly's mother was genuinely surprised to learn that Elly was on the train. Since Elly's "mother" turns out to be a Division operative, this implies that the Division didn't have prior knowledge that Elly would be on that train. Which raises the question: Why were there a bunch of Division operatives on that train?
  • Maybe those Division operatives were following Aidan?
• When Dr. Vogler takes control of Elly/Rachel and orders her to kill Aidan why does she care about stopping the upload, which wasn't part of her orders?
• Just kill Ritter for god's sake! For being the head of The Division, the guy is an idiot for leaving himself physically vulnerable almost all the time in the presence of his foes. Aidan was being hunted by The Division operatives under Ritter's command. It wouldn't have made any difference to Aidan if he spared or killed Ritter during that hostage situation where Elly meet up with her "parents". Using "morals" as justification for Aidan's restraint goes out of the window when one recalled he was utterly merciless towards mook operatives. The same can apply (to some extent) with a recovered Elly/Rachel when Ritter was knocked out (again) during their tussle in the finale, although one can still justify she feels some parental bond with him.
• Elly needs to give Aidan a "bear hug" to hold onto him as he parachutes them to safety, yet she passes out after a few seconds. Why didn't she fall?
  • It's quick, but he's shown clipping a belt around her waist before opening the door to attach her to him.
• There is really no need for Aidan to lie to Elly about her books being "predictive" of future events and instead he should've just straight-up revealed she was an agent who had lost her memories. The film itself tries to justify this by having Aidan claim that it would be best to break it down slowly to prevent her from being too overwhelmed. Like as if being dragged from a life of a celebrity novelist into a dangerous, high-stakes adventure isn't already overwhelming for her psyche in the first place... Or that his lie would lead to the rather unnecessary misunderstanding about him trying to kill Elly, leading to the abovementioned criticism that the multiple plot twists are there for the sake of being there.
  • Eh, I think Aidan being secretly in love with Elly means that he's trying to ease this in. He might have been worried all of this would cause brain damage or confusion about memories. He's not a psychologist and doesn't know what will or won't damage her mind.
• The audience is expected to believe that Elly's parents are Division operatives keeping tabs on her ever since her amnesia. Thinking back, this means five years of parent-child relationship was nurtured between the three characters and the post-reveal events seemed to indicate nothing of their relationship meant anything? Either the character writing was flawed here (As critics themselves alleged) or the characters are blatantly sociopathic.
  • I mean yes, Ritter is blatantly a psychopath that can barely maintain his fatherly facade despite being a professional spy. The shotgun scene where he executes an underling shows that. Doctor Vogler also is a psychopath given she brainwashes people for a living. They're both experienced professional liars and manipulators. Elly's relationship to them also takes a nose dive as she realizes everything was a lie and her old memories return.
• Throughout the movie, the Division can't decide between capturing or killing Elly Conway. Even before Elly revealed to Big Bad Ritter that she intended to betray the Division all along, at some point the Division operators were clearly trying to kill her before they knew of the Masterfile's location, so why all the trouble spent on getting that file in the first place?
  • I think they're trying to kill Aidan and Elly is just getting in the way.
• After all the plot twists were revealed, the film's premise from the beginning now looked rather absurd. The Division is spending unnecessary resources just to get Rachel Kylle to reveal the location of the Masterfile that would expose the villains. Five years of faking a completely new backstory for the amnesiac agent who they actually treat as one of their own, despite the fact that these same resources could be used to rehabilitate her back to her real self, almost certainly at a cheaper cost.
  • They're parodies of Bond villains so overly complicated and ridiculous plans is kind on brand.
• Finally, the Rule of Cool means the audience can usually ignore this, but regardless, being stuck in a non-athletic, non-physical life for five years would mean any agent regardless of their competence would be out of practice and realistically they can't ease back into their former role as quickly as Elly did. The movie acts as if the person's former physical reflexes and abilities would instantly return when their memories were restored.
  • You gave the reason for this in your trope name-drop. Realistically, yes, she'd have a lot of rust to shake off...but we have a movie to finish, and giving her a re-training monrage would cut into the pacing.
  • Alternatively, amnesia patients lose their active memory, but not their muscle memory. Anyone who's trained in martial arts for a significant amount of time can tell you that you never really lose the training when you've practiced enough.

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