Film Review: The Man from UNCLE

Spy vs Spy

JACK GRAVES sees The Man from UNCLE. And pronounces it good…

AS A FAN OF the original Man from UNCLE series (and the bizarre movies they made by chopping tv episodes together), I was cautiously optimistic about Guy Ritchie’s take on the classic spy show. Richie’s take on Sherlock Holmes was great fun, proving he has the ability to balance comedy, drama, and action without any one element overrunning the others. Important  when you’re adapting a show with such a great sense of fun as The Man from UNCLE.

In Richie’s version of UNCLE Napoleon Solo (Henry Cavill), an art thief and WW2 veteran turned top CIA agent, and KGB agent Illya Kuryakin (Armie Hammer) must team up in a US-USSR joint operation to foil the nuclear designs of a mysterious criminal empire. Their only lead is Gaby Teller (Alicia Vikander), an East German car mechanic and estranged daughter of a top nazi rocket scientist.

The opening sequence showcases the abilities of all three protagonists, as Solo endeavours to extract Gaby to West Germany, and Kuryakin tries to stop them. Gaby drives, Solo shoots and suaves, and Kuryakin is an unstoppable monster, at one point tearing the boot off Gaby’s car and then throwing it at the car. It’s a great fun sequence. Having spent the night trying to kill each other, Solo and Kuryakin are  unhappy when they’re told they’ll have to work as partners.

The three main characters have great chemistry, with (like the original show) Kuryakin as the main sympathetic character. The obligatory spy-movie romance of the film is handled tastefully and with humour in the relationship between Kuryakin and Gaby.

Solo’s character is enhanced  by making him more morally dubious than the playboy/boyscout (playboyscout?) he was in the TV show. He’s working for the CIA in lieu of a jail sentence for art thefts in post-war Germany. His motivation in becoming the CIA’s best agent rather than  coasting through community service is one of the main mysteries of the film.

The villains are good – if stock – characters. They’re well-acted, and nicely dislikeable. Elizabeth Debicki performs well as the evil empress of a criminal empire, and Luca Calvani does a good job as her scummy playboy husband. There are twists and turns in both plot and character development – trying to avoid spoilers here – but nothing  anyone does in the movie seems out of character,  refreshing when so many spy movies drop character for the sake of a twist.

Guy Ritchie has always been a talented director (if occasionally misguided – I’m looking at you Madonna), and his directorial flair is on full show in UNCLE. The effective use of split-screen is a callback to the original show. It’s a great way to convey information without making the audience sit through an entire sneaking/safecracking/etc sequence in real time. Someone call Josh Trank about this. There’s also a nice (if not entirely new) technique where he zooms out of one area to an aerial view, then zooms back into a different area. This makes the relative position of things in city-wide chases a little more comprehensible.

Lots of car chases, a few shootouts, all well-shot and well-conveyed, often laugh-out-loud funny (one boat chase sequence in particular had me in stitches). Refreshingly Ritchie doesn’t fall back on the lazy jump-cut mania that is the standard for action cinema right now. Interestingly, although  a fair few people get killed, there’s very little blood. This may be for the sake of a PG-13 rating in the States, but it’s also a classic spy show thing. The original UNCLE, and other shows like The Avengers, often had stabbings and shootings but rarely showed blood. It’d be interesting to know what the motivation was, but it doesn’t detract from the film.

Two things I didn’t like about the movie. Firstly, in the later vehicle chase sequences some overhead shots are obviously CGI. Usually they’re only used as the camera zooms back into the real chase, but they’re jarring. They look like toy cars dropped on a picture of a forest. Secondly, a lot is made of Gaby’s ability as an auto-mechanic and driver, but, outside of the opening sequence, this is never referenced again – a shame. Gaby is included as a part of the sequel lead-in at the end of the film, so I hope she gets more action sequences.

Beyond those complaints The Man from UNCLE is something increasingly rare: a charming movie with a lot of entertainment value, a lot of laughs, that stayed true to the spirit of its source material. Spy movies seem to have become awfully serious. It’s nice to have a throwback to the campier days without descending into outright comedy like Austin Powers or Viz-like anal sex jokes like Kingsman.

Armie Hamer and Henry Cavill have got a movie to be proud of. So far their cinematic careers haven’t been inspiring, but they are extremely likeable here. It’s nice to see what Guy Ritchie can do provided you keep awful cockney gangsters and nonsensical mystical gibberish away from him. I hope the film gets a sequel, but given that I like it it’ll probably tank.

Jack Graves