Above: Henry Cavill and Armie Hammer play sparring spies in Mr. Ritchie’s film. Photo ©Warner Bros. Pictures
Shiny, fluffy, and mostly
delightful, “The Man From U.N.C.L.E.” is the latest frolic from director Guy
Ritchie (he adapted the film from a television series). Most recently, Mr. Ritchie whipped
up a frenetic and facile version of Sherlock Holmes; now, he’s moved onto
Napoleon Solo (Henry Cavill), a tenacious (and one-dimensional) secret agent
man working for the CIA at the height of the Cold War.
After
a credits sequence tinged with retro-red headlines, Mr. Ritchie guides us through
the concrete-heavy streets of Berlin, where Napoleon pays a visit to Gaby (the
indispensable Alicia Vikander), a car mechanic who happens to be the daughter
of a Nazi scientist. Napoleon, we learn,
wants to capture Gaby’s father, a man who’s been targeted by the KGB’s Illya
Karuyakin (a beautiful blonde monstrosity played by Armie Hammer).
Illya spends the first leg of the film scampering after
Napoleon and Gaby. Yet it’s the
inevitable team-up between these three would-be sleuths that makes “The Man
From U.N.C.L.E.” at least modestly entertaining. Unlike the plastic figurine heroes of
“Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation,” Napoleon, Gaby, and Ilya behave somewhat
like real and eccentric human beings, most memorably in a scene where Gaby
spins a record, dons some shades, and dances across Illya’s lush hotel room
while drunk.
Shallow
Mr. Ritchie may be; conventional he is not.
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