THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E.
DIRECTOR: Guy Ritchie
CAST: Henry Cavill, Armie Hammer, Alicia Vikander, Elizabeth Debicki, Sylvester Groth, Christian Berkel, Luca Calvani, Misha Kuznetsov, Jared Harris, Hugh Grant
CLASSIFICATION: PG13
RUNNING TIME: 116 minutes
RATING: ***
As US-Russian relations go, so goes the temperature of The Man From U.N.C.L.E., which means that this big-screen revival of the TV series of the mid-1960s is being served lukewarm. Set during the Cold War and stoked by seductive settings and a good cast, this film gets everything about half-right; conceptually it has a few things going for it and it’s not unenjoyable, but the tone and creative register never feel confident. It’s not bad, but not good enough either.
For at least the first two of its four seasons (1964-68), The Man From U.N.C.L.E. was the coolest thing on TV. Co-conceived by Ian Fleming just as Bond mania was taking off at the time of Goldfinger, the show paired US and Russian agents working for the United Network Command for Law and Enforcement to defeat T.H.R.U.S.H., a sinister organisation bent on global destruction and dominance. Robert Vaughn’s Napoleon Solo was the dashing, dark-haired, well-dressed womaniser, while David McCallum’s Illya Kuryakin, black turtlenecked and his blond hair worn long was the more hard-to-reach heart-throb.
Director and co-writer Guy Ritchie vividly guns the initial action with a wild car chase in the vicinity of a recreation of Berlin’s Checkpoint Charlie in 1963. Coming at each other from rival sides are Solo (Cavill) and Kuryakin (Hammer), who’s identified as Ukrainian, but is no less fanatically committed to the Motherland.
Their mutual object of desire is an East German car mechanic known as Gaby Teller (Vikander), whose father is a renegade Nazi. Solo captures her first, but Kuryakin nips at their heels during a protracted pursuit conducted in Eastern European cars, a witty touch given the sluggishness of Communist bloc vehicles.
The chase provides a colourful means for the two spies to introduce themselves to one another, as their espionage bosses have temporarily set their ideological differences aside in the interest of apprehending the elusive Dr Udo Teller. Both sides are betting that the temptation of reuniting with his long-lost daughter will make Teller show his hand, and it’s up to the competitive dashing agents to set the trap.
So far, so good, it would seem, except that it’s not, exactly. Ritchie and co-writer Lionel Wigram have dedicated themselves to respecting the Cold War backdrop and taking their super-villain as seriously as a good Bond film always has. They’re also into high-end globe-trotting and slipping in a smart-ass quip.
But where the film doesn’t find secure footing is in settling on the right pitch for the spies’ competitiveness vs co-operation. The relationship between Solo and Kuryakin is intensely serious; under any other circumstances, they would be trying to kill each other. As that option remains off the table, a different dynamic must be developed, but a modus operandi between them never satisfactorily settles in here.
Solo’s background of having made a fortune as a black market antiquities dealer in post-war Europe while mingling with the wealthy and then, when caught, given the choice between prison or working for the CIA, is plausible enough. He’s also at ease with the bemused quip and self-assured insight, and Cavill is affably likeable as an agent of many talents.
Unfortunately, Kuryakin is more imprecisely conceived as a perfect product of the Communist state, a humourless functionary who suffers from seizures and spells because he’s so tightly wound and must uncomfortably pretend to be Gaby’s fiance while trying to flush out her father in Rome. This puts a burden on Hammer to give the guy some charm, but neither he nor the writers have found a disarming way to provide it.
And as skillful and attractive as Vikander is, her character also comes off as too serious and narrowly conceived, putting a damper on the blend of legitimate threat and sophisticated hijinks that Ritchie is trying to achieve.
That said, some of Ritchie’s efforts to put colourful twists on a war horse genre are agreeable, the locations (mostly in Italy) provide a surrogate holiday and the supporting cast generate small ripples of amusement. – Hollywood Reporter