ONCE YOU KNOW THE SECRET DON’T LET THE CAT OUT OF THE BAG.

Successful spy novelist Elly Conway (Bryce Dallas Howard) goes on a train journey to see her mother, but is thrown into an adventure with actual spies and assassins.

It starts out as another Romancing the Stone (1984), this action-comedy that Matthew Vaughn intended as a salute to 1980s action movies. But he can’t break free from his signature mold and delivers another overlong, entirely tongue-in-cheek Vaughn project where it’s hard to buy into all the twists.

Amusing at times; Howard and Sam Rockwell are a likable couple.

2024-U.S.-U.K. 139 min. Color. Widescreen. Directed by Matthew Vaughn. Cast: Bryce Dallas Howard (Elly Conway), Sam Rockwell (Aidan Wilde), Bryan Cranston (Ritter), Catherine O’Hara, Henry Cavill, Sofia Boutella, Dua Lipa, Ariana DeBose, John Cena, Samuel L. Jackson. Cameo: Richard E. Grant.

Trivia: Co-produced by Vaughn; co-executive produced by Claudia Schiffer.