The Man From U.N.C.L.E review: “Some fun, but often rather dull”

The Man From UNCLE review: Guy Ritchie delivers a high-octane, machine-gun edited caper, that while some fun, is more often that not really quite dull.

Guy Ritchie lends his hands to a remake of the classic 1960s television show The Man From U.N.C.L.E. which pits the CIA versus the KGB; a retro actioner with customary Ritchie humour, high-octane shoot-outs and machine-gun one-liners.

41 years on from the debut of the original TV series which starred the legendary Robert Vaughn and David McCallum, Ritchie and producing and writing partner Lionel Wigram, opt to take us back to Europe at the height of the Cold War era. It’s 1964 and Henry Cavill‘s CIA Napoleon Solo is pitted against Armie Hammer‘s KGB operative Illya Kuryakin. Following a rough struggle at the start of the movie which is essentially in place to prove who has the biggest manhood, our two protagonists have to unite for a joint mission against a new threat; a mysterious organisation that is playing around with nuclear weapons.

This origin story is essentially a paint-by-numbers affair in which Ritchie and his creative team fail to bring anything new to the table, and the promise that he showed many years ago with his first two movies Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, and the slightly superior, in my mind, Snatch. True, all of of Ritchie’s trademarks are present here; the fast editing, use of slow-mo, witty banter and comedic set-pieces, which work some of the time, but more often than not fall a little flat. The problem with the new version of The Man From U.N.C.LE. is that it’s difficult to see what audience it is trying to cater towards. 41 years is a long time in the spy genre, and 22 Bond movies, a few Bournes and a handful of Mission: Impossibles later, and the world is a much different place. Where Tom Cruise and co. managed to reinvent an old 60s show and bring it bang up to date, and continue to do so over five pretty-darned good movies spanning twenty years, Ritchie’s ‘U.N.C.L.E.’ tries to breath new life into a series that probably should have been left for dead.

There are some positives. Ritchie has crafted a retro-spy movie that fans of the genre will undoubtably love. An action-packed, stylishly edited, retro-actioner billed for the modern generation. We just hope they buy into it. Super cool, super sexy and super fun at times with Henry Cavill proving he’s the thinking man’s spy with an eye on the 007 job in the future. He does give Daniel Craig a run for his money. The film is well-paced and the action scenes pretty inventive, particularly the opening scene as Solo and Kuryakin face-off against one another. Hugh Grant is sadly under-used and is present merely to set-up potential sequels which Warner Bros. are sure to be rubbing their hands at the mere thought of the prospect.

Very much like Richie and Wigram’s other collaboration, Sherlock Holmes and its inferior sequel, The Man From U.N.C.L.E. is run-of-the-mill, sometimes rather mediocre stuff, devoid of the wit that Richie’s early stuff promised. In a summer full of lackluster big-budget-bombs this is far from the worst, but falls right in the higher end of a pile of rather poor potentials that should have delivered a lot more.

The Man From UNCLE review, Paul Heath, August 2015.

The Man From UNCLE opens in UK and U.S. cinemas from Friday 14th August, 2015.