The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (***1/4)

One wonders about the impetus for adapting a TV show whose last episode aired more than 45 years earlier (though the film rights were sold in 1993). Will the name mean anything to audiences not born when the spy series aired (19964–1968)? I suspect most people will be more reminded of an American James Bond film when they see this, and in fact Bond creator Ian Fleming had a hand in creating the character of Napoleon Solo, played by Robert Vaughn originally and Henry Cavill here.  They may also be reminded of other films by director Guy Ritchie, whose work includes Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels, Snatch, and two Sherlock Homes movies. Notably, the Cold War-era setting is retained from the TV series, which makes sense given that the other main character is Solo’s Russian counterpart, Illya Kuryakin (Armie Hammer).

The series (like the Bond films) wildly varied in tone; Richie’s version is less serious than the early episodes while avoiding the camp of the later ones. It’s slickly edited with snappy dialogue and has plenty of action, and some violence, but with a modest body count. In other words, it’s like other Guy Ritchie films, and I liked it. Cavill plays Solo using a voice that sounds like it should be coming out of a 1970s margarine advertisement, and the presence of some familiar tropes — Nazi villains, a nuclear bomb plot, the womanizing spy, the femme fatale, and so on—makes it almost, but not quite, a parody. But it is intentionally funny at times. The plotting is complicated enough that I couldn’t have repeated it back to you right after I saw the movie but coherent enough that I could pretty much follow it while I was watching.

Unlike the TV show pilot, the film provides an origin story for both U.N.C.L.E. (the organization) and the Solo-Kuryakin pairing, including an exciting opening sequence in which Solo recruits an East German auto mechanic (Alicia Vikander) to help uncover a plot involving her estranged father and Kuryakin chases after them. The civilian recruit was also a common element of the series, but, even though the setting is 1963, the female characters get an update. Vikander’s character not only has to pretend to be Kuryakin’s fiancée but also gets to use her mechanic skills. And Elizabeth Debicki plays a wealthy woman who wants to bed the two agents, or kill them, or both.

Probably the first half of the movie is better, because it’s a little more original, but it’s entertaining to the end.

IMDb link


viewed 8/10/15 7;30 at Ritz 5; posted 8/22/15