Review: The Man from U.N.C.LE.
It may be a wonder why it took this long for a film adaptation of the popular spy series The Man from U.N.C.L.E. to get off the ground, considering Hollywood's penchant for plundering the television archives and the spy genre's resurgence of late. This year alone has seen some thoroughly nifty entries - Kingsman: The Secret Service, Spy, Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation - and there's still the latest Bond film, Spectre, to look forward to this Thanksgiving.
Producer John Davis optioned the rights to The Man from U.N.C.L.E. in 1993, years before Mission: Impossible (another film adaptation of a well-known espionage program) began its profitable run. Directors Quentin Tarantino and Steven Sodebergh were attached at different stages, and Davis estimates a little over a dozen scripts were commissioned over the 20-year gestation period. George Clooney, Tom Cruise, and Bradley Cooper were among those in talks for the lead role of American agent Napoleon Solo, but something kept the film stalled in development hell. Perhaps the film gods were waiting for a particular star to ascend, and that star in question turns out to be the Swedish sensation, Alicia Vikander. For, as easily as Henry Cavill and Armie Hammer inhabit their respective roles Solo and his Russian counterpart Illya Kuryakin, Guy Ritchie's bromantic ode to Sixties action films would not have the same degree of verve and vigour without her scintillating presence.
The television show, which ran from 1964 to 1968, was co-conceived by Bond creator Ian Fleming at a time when Bond's success made spying the coolest game in town. Tony Rome, Matt Helm, and Modesty Blaise were thwarting villains on the big screen whilst The Man from U.N.C.L.E. vied for viewership with Mission: Impossible and I Spy. Of course, The Man from U.N.C.L.E. would seem like a still photograph compared to Ritchie's typically restless and energetic offering, which opens with a wild car chase during which Solo (Cavill), assigned to extract one East German auto mechanic Gaby Teller (Vikander), is amused to find the dogged and determined Kuryakin (Hammer) hot on their heels as they wind their way through the streets and side alleys of 1963 Berlin.
Solo manages to evade the seemingly superhuman Russian (who nearly slows down their automobile with his bare hands), but tomorrow tells a different tale. Solo and Kuryakin's handlers have temporarily put aside their competing ideologies aside for the greater good. Gaby's father, who was Hitler's favourite scientist, has gone missing and his research, in the wrong hands, could prove fatal to the existence of the free world. With Gaby as bait, the CIA and KGB poster boys must team up to investigate Gaby's uncle Rudi (Sylvester Groth) and his employers, wealthy Italian couple Alexander (Luca Calvani) and Victoria (Elizabeth Debicki) Vinciguerra. The hook of the film, aside from the tongue-in-cheek humour, gorgeously attired women, and gadget fetishism, is the combative alliance between Solo and Kuryakin, who are in constant competition and who often banter and bicker like an old married couple.
Cavill and Hammer certainly give it a go, and both deliver the most playful performances of their careers thus far. Cavill, in particular, scores nicely as the urbane Solo. Shedding the Superman suit has relaxed him, and there's an unforced lightness in his playing that suggests he would do well in more comedic roles. Hammer has a slightly trickier role in that Ritchie and co-writer Lionel Wigram have decided to make Kuryakin all but a certifiable psychotic, ready to rage against all manner of animal, mineral, and vegetable at the most minuscule provocation. This is amusing the first several times, but turns tired as the film wears on. Still, Hammer overcomes this mild handicap with his natural charisma. To watch the two men argue over Gaby's attire ("You can't put a Paco Rabanne belt on a Patou.") or see Solo sit back and have a glass of vino with Louis Prima crooning in the background whilst Kuryakin barely survives a speedboat chase (one of the film's best sequences) is to be thoroughly entertained by their not inconsiderable homoerotic and very considerable caterwauling camaraderie.
The central relationship is very much in Ritchie's wheelhouse, having directed such testosterone-fueled fare as Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels, Snatch, and Sherlock Holmes. It's clear that Ritchie enjoyed the film's period setting as he pays unabashed homage to the likes of Norman Jewison (the split-screen technique from Jewison's The Thomas Crown Affair is deployed here, sometimes to unnecessarily dizzying effect) and Michelangelo Antonioni. (The Italian Antonioni would have gone wild for the Australian Debicki, whose architectural physicality was made for his strikingly precise compositions.) For the most part, Ritchie and cinematographer John Mathieson craft a visual logic that tempers Ritchie's signature flashiness to serve the story. Then the third act arrives and the film takes a sharp swerve from the jocular to the sobersided; the sudden shift jars with what preceded it (even the final chase across the island veers into Mad Max: Fury Road territory when not resembling some glamorously dirt-flecked BMW commercial).
Nevertheless, The Man from U.N.C.L.E. is a predominantly gratifying affair especially with Vikander on board. Her pairing with Hammer is markedly inspired, with the slight and lissome actress cutting the towering Hammer down to size. Vikander, who has had quite the banner year with her exceptional turns in Ex Machina and Testament of Youth, proves herself a charmer of the highest order. Her dance with Hammer, which ends up with him slapped twice and head-butted to the floor, may be the film's highlight.
The Man from U.N.C.L.E.
Directed by: Guy Ritchie
Written by: Guy Ritchie, Lionel Wigram; based on the television series by Sam Rolfe
Starring: Henry Cavill, Armie Hammer, Alicia Vikander, Elizabeth Debicki, Hugh Grant, Jared Harris, Luca Calvani, Sylvester Groth
