“The Man From U.N.C.L.E.”: Love Letter To The 60’s Review

If you enjoyed the comedic (and awesome) chaos of The Kingsmen, then you will enjoy this spy vs spy adventure.  Guy Richie’s sleek and sharp love letter to 60’s spy films was surprisingly enjoyable.  I say this because anytime you get an update of a classic tv series as a modern movie, it can go poorly.  Thankfully, that wasn’t the case with The Man From U.N.C.L.E.  

If you aren’t familiar with the TV series this film is based on, the first few minutes of the opening fills in the blanks.  Our main character Napoleon Solo (Henry Cavill), was a really good American art and antiquities thief who was caught and given the ol “work for us or you go away for life” deals. Illya Kuryakin (Armie Hammer) is the son of a disgraced former KGB agent, who has some severe anger issues.  The agents clash over the personage of Gabby (Alicia Vikander) and her shipping/torture mogel uncle and nuclear physicist father. Hilarity and violence ensue when the CIA man and KGB man are teamed up in order to bring down a family of villains hell bent on giving the 3rd Reich an atom bomb.  The action is pretty good, the fabrics are bold, and the music is stellar.

The first thing I want to talk about is the ladies.  You go into the film thinking maybe they will be as advertised, Bond Girls with Twiggy’s sky high trademark false lashes.  And yes, that is definitely how they are styled, beautifully so with hair and frocks. But then you realize they’re just as important as their male counterparts; one being the head of “Evil Empire” and the other holding her booze and wrestling (probably my favorite scene) with a top KGB agent. She ALSO leads a mean car chase through the streets of Berlin, and shows the boys a thing or two about how to tune up a race car.  I was ridiculously happy with the abilities of Alicia Vikander (Ex Machina) and Elizabeth Debicki (Macbeth) needless to say.

I will say that the men, while being the gorgeous well dressed and chiseled specimens they are, made some odd choices with the tone and delivery of the majority of the dialog.  Not that it was bad, just strange.  Every single line had an almost movie announcer quality to the timbre and breath.  I would totally take a straight recording of the score and dialog to make myself a “movies on tape” thing to listen to, as I enjoyed the choice.  It harkened to the time period.  I was actually just reading other sites’ reviews, and surprised at the amount of male writers who didn’t feel the two men worked well together.  Maybe they didn’t understand script-chemistry for real friendship, I dunno.

Also, I laughed a lot about things I probably shouldn’t have. The first being that anytime Armie Hammer called Henry Cavill “Cowboy”, I would immediately make a Lone Ranger joke, because seriously, how can you not?  But Armie was wonderful, and I wish he would have done this film before that Disney monstrosity.

I also couldn’t contain my glee at the sight of Henry’s hair curling in the center of his forehead during a scene with boats and water.  Because the Superman “curl of power” is important to me, ok?

While the final act didn’t deliver as well as the rest of the film, the ending very widely leaves the door open for a sequel.  All in all, a rather enjoyable highly stylized period spy flick, we highly suggest dressing up and going to see The Man From U.N.C.L.E. when it opens worldwide on August 18th, 2015.