The original TV series featured Robert Vaughn as Solo and David McCallum as Kuryakin.
Advertisement
The stunning cast of The Man from U.N.C.L.E.
FANS of Daniel Craig’s Bond will be neither shaken nor stirred by Guy Ritchie’s new spy movie. So the enjoyment I got from it may have been chemically enhanced, and I make no promise you will have the same response.
Their mutual object of desire is a attractive East German auto mechanic (a wonderfully absurd contradiction in terms and no doubt a cinematic first) known as Gaby Teller (Alicia Vikander), whose father is a renegade Nazi known to have been Hitler’s favorite rocket expert.
The British filmmaker who turned Sherlock Holmes into a bohemian action hero uses the 1960s television espionage drama as a jumping-off point for his own interpretation, which keeps the period setting but jettisons much of the show’s worldwide intrigue in favor of shootouts and vehicle chases.
When they’re busted by Russian KGB Agent Illya Kuryakin (Armie Hammer), the pair manage to escape over the Berlin wall, only for Solo to discover he’s been partnered with Kuryakin to take down an global crime organisation hell-bent on trashing the world with nuclear weaponry.
It turns out, the opening sequence is the highlight of the movie.
The soundtrack is nearly reason enough to go see The Man From U.N.C.L.E.
It’s the Napoleon and Illya show.
The female leads played by rising stars Alicia Vikander and Elizabeth Debicki – alongside Henry Cavill and Armie Hammer as the aforementioned spies – are like Bond girls in that they’re both strong and enigmatic. “None of it takes itself too seriously”.
The report pulled the breaks when it said Guy Ritchie was able to make the movie entertaining in a “fizzy, offbeat” way.
It’s easy to go into U.N.C.L.E. with a chip on your shoulder. That possibility seems unsure with the mixed results here. Yes, 2015 has had no shortage of the genre getting some really nice outings, even ones that are more modern than retro.
Advertisement
Though he doesn’t appear until well into The Man from U.N.C.L.E. 116 minutes. Rated PG-13 for action violence, some suggestive content and partial nudity. Though Vikander praises Ritchie’s dab hand at injecting “a lot of wit and irony” into the script, a good deal of the humor was improvised by the actors with the director’s encouragement. Henry Cavill and Armie Hammer star. Still the movie has some minor charms.
