Film review: The Man From U.N.C.L.E.

Dir: Guy Ritchie

With: Henry Cavill, Armie Hammer, Alicia Vikander

Runtime: 116 minutes

GUY Ritchie was born the year the original television series, The Man from U.N.C.L.E, finished its first run in 1968. That has not stopped the British director from delivering his own take on the show, much as he did with the legend of Sherlock Holmes, but this time with far less success.

On the surface, Ritchie’s Man From U.N.C.L.E seems to have it all. But one quickly realises that is all it has - surface glamour. There is an air of ersatz about it, a sense that this is a grand game of dressing up by folk not old enough to remember the era but determined to recreate it as an exercise in retro cool. As such, it is about as convincing an evocation of a time, place, and Cold War mindset as a glossy magazine fashion shoot. And about as humorous.

Ritchie opens proceedings at Checkpoint Charlie in 1963. Consider this a prequel to the television show, an origins story which tells the tale of how Napoleon Solo, an American agent, came to be working with the Soviet Union’s finest, Illya Kuryakin. The roles first taken by Robert Vaughn and David McCallum respectively are here the property of Henry Cavill (Man of Steel) and Armie Hammer (The Lone Ranger).

The opening sequence signals the problems that follow. Solo has ventured behind the Wall to tell Gaby (Alicia Vikander), the daughter of a German nuclear scientist, that the CIA would like a word with her dad. A shadowy network of former Nazis and other criminals has teamed up to wreak havoc, and America wants to stop them. As does the USSR, which has sent along its own agent, Kuryakin. It should be a thrilling opening, matter of life and death stuff as agents battle to get in and out of East Berlin with their lives. Instead, overlong, sluggish, and burdened with exposition, it is about as nerve-jangling an experience as making a cup of tea.

But everyone looks marvellous and that, one senses, was the main consideration of the filmmakers. So on we trot as the men who will one day be from U.N.C.L.E (the United Network Command for Law and Enforcement) are put through their paces.

The point about Solo and Kuryakin is that they are meant to be an odd couple who somehow hit it off. But Cavill and Hammer start off being awkward in each other’s company and never progress beyond that point. What should eventually become a couple of young bucks trading humorous banter comes across like two complete strangers reading lines from a script. When it comes to chemistry, Robert Downey Jr and Jude Law, aka Ritchie’s Holmes and Watson, they are not.

At least Vikander (Ex Machina) looks as though she is having fun, even if she is confined to the sidelines of proceedings. Elsewhere, Ritchie has time for a long, lingering shot of another female character, wearing nothing but her skimpies, walking from a bedroom. If such casual sexism is of the time, the tin-eared dialogue - “I’m out of here”; “Don’t be a pussy” - is not. Speaking of the time, Ritchie’s Ladybird-level guide to the Second World War and the Cold War is likely to irritate those old enough to remember the original Man from U.N.C.L.E series while turning off younger viewers to whom the period is as much a part of ancient history as the Aztecs.

There is one sequence which shows what an infinitely better film Ritchie might have had if he had played around more with expectations. Midway through another dull action sequence, Ritchie and Cavill have Solo do something completely unexpected. What was dreary becomes vibrant, what was snooze-worthy becomes slyly funny.

The original television series, being conceived and shot in the Sixties, did not have to pretend to be something it was not. Ritchie’s movie is posing from the off. As such, this Man from U.N.C.L.E is one very poor relation.