Mildly diverting in its best moments though it is, the overwhelming sensation The Man From U.N.C.L.E leaves behind is of languid self-indulgence.
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Starring Henry Cavill (Man of Steel) and Armie Hammer (The Social Network) as opposing super-spies Napoleon Solo and Iliya Kuryakin (originally played by Robert Vaughn and David McCallum).
The New York premiere came just three days after the couple made their first high-profile appearance as man and wife in London on Friday.
The TV series, which began in black and white and ran for 105 episodes, spawned eight films and reached such cultural prominence that props, costumes, documents and a video clip are in the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library’s exhibit on spies and counterspies.
Guy Ritchie has developed an “interest” in women’s clothing.
He divorced Madonna seven years ago. But their characters never really get out of second gear. He had this enormous cavalcade of hot young chicks, and he was so bored by the hotness of these ladies!
But in Guy Ritchie’s version, the political oppression represented by Soviet Communism, the rooting-out of escaped Nazi torturers and the omnipresent, existential threat of atomic annihilation is just delicious.
And so, for the sheer sake of curiosity of what’s gonna happen next, this skeptic-turned-thrill-seeker will look forward to next week to see who producer Sam Rolfe, exec. producer Norman Felton and the various scribblers pick for spoofing in a serious way.
As for our main villain, Elizabeth Deblicki (The Great Gatsby) is fairly underused as shipping heiress Victoria Vinciguerra, and while she aptly purrs her limited lines and dresses impeccably, she’s only less convincing as a villain as she is an Italian. Elizabeth is a fabulous actress, by the way.
She wrote: “15 years have gone by too quickly!!”
I was sort of surprised by Henry Cavill in this movie. “I understand why Robert and I weren’t offered roles in it, because I think it would be more of a distraction than anything else”. I don’t trust him. What it comes down to is, would I like this guy?
Image courtesy of Warner Bros. “You’re playing a spy, essentially, and they’re not going to be hugely out of shape”.
I’m not sure if I have a clear answer for that one. It makes you marvel why they even bothered.
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The Man From U.N.C.L.E. isn’t like Ritchie’s overbearing, gimmicky Sherlock Holmes movies, also co-written with screenwriter Lionel Wigram. At Comic-Con, they showed a video of you on the set of your next film, King Arthur, and you looked like you were having the time of your life. For this endeavor, we owe to Cavill about as much gratitude as the American public did to Solo for his labor toward worldwide harmony at the summit of the Cold War: A fat lot of good it did in the grand scheme of things, but the effort was commendable.
