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Movie Review: The Man from U.N.C.L.E.

By Bill Wine

KYW Newsradio

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) --- There's been no groundswell or clamor to bring "The Man from U.N.C.L.E." from the television vault and move it to the movie screen as a stand-alone feature or a franchise starter, its cult status notwithstanding.

But here it is smack-dab in the middle of this everything-old-is-new-again moviemaking era we find ourselves in.

Hey, at least it's not a sequel.

Based on the 1960s campy and comedic spy series that James Bond author Ian Fleming was a key contributor to, the retro thriller, The Man from U.N.C.L.E. – which could be seen as James Bond with a twist --is set when the Cold War is at its hottest, the sixties are still seen as swinging, and two rival spies are forced to work together to save the world.

The TV series starred Robert Vaughn as dapper CIA agent Napoleon Solo and David Mccallum as ruthless KGB agent Illya Kuryakin.  Both work for the United Network Command for Law and Enforcement, a secret international espionage and law enforcement agency.

The movie offers Henry Cavill, the high-flying, cape-wearing star of Man of Steel as well as the soon-to-be Clark Kent/Superman in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice as Solo, and Armie Hammer, from The Social Network and The Long Ranger, as Kuryakin.

The ubiquitous Alicia Vikander (Ex-Machina) plays the covert mechanic-turned-operative Gabriella Teller, while Elizabeth Debicki plays the wealthy villain, an arms dealer intent on destabilizing the world through nuclear warfare, and Hugh Grant chimes in as a British spymaster.

Solo and Kuryakin are East-meets-West frenemies whose mission in this outing is to rescue the kidnapped father of Gaby Teller, a missing German scientist who has some connection to the world's next big bomb.

Director Guy Ritchie (Sherlock Holmes, Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, Snatch, Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, Revolver, Swept Away), working from a script he co-wrote with Lionel Wigram that they based on a story they co-wrote with Jeff Kleeman and David C. Wilson, puts style above all else here – above truth, accuracy, drama, and wit.

It's a reminder that the director's early work was characterized by frenetic cutting and split screens and virtual music videos, seeming to cry out to an audience with attention deficit disorder, a tendency that Ritchie more or less retired for his two admirable Sherlock Holmes flicks.

Well, he's down to his old tricks with this project, with lots more posing than acting, a thin plot despite the choking truckload of exposition that he feels compelled to include, and with the contours of a comedy that somehow forgets to actually be funny.

2
(2 stars out of 4)

The one performer who does something with the material and leaves a vivid impression not because of his dialogue but in spite of it is Hammer as Kuryakin.  But the rest is fashion-magazine slick and more wafer-thin than it needs to be.

So we'll spy on 2 stars out of 4 for The Man from U.N.C.L.E., the energetic but empty reboot from the itchy Guy Ritchie.

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