(NOTE: Possible SPOILERS ahead!!!)
After the big-screen travesties of “21 Jump Street,”
“The Avengers” (as in Steed and Mrs. Peel), “I Spy,” “Starsky and Hutch,” “The Wild Wild West,” and probably others my memory refuses to dredge up, a Hollywood remake has gotten it right. Guy Ritchie of “Sherlock Holmes” fame has
given us “The Man from U.N.C.L.E.” for a new generation.
As we were warned
and as the trailers have shown us, it’s not just like the series. There are no steel-walled headquarters behind
a tailor shop, no Innocent character (though East Berlin
“chop-shop girl” Gaby Teller [right] starts out that way). Waverly is there, though not all the way
through the film. There’s no bulletproof
glass scene, let alone as an intro. No
Thrush either; the “international criminal organization” in the film is given no name.
And our heroes Solo and Illya are given colorful backgrounds
completely unlike the original characters. Napoleon Solo [Henry Cavill, below], while he is ex-Army,
is kin to Alexander Mundy of “It Takes a Thief,” a former heist artist working off
his prison sentence by spying for the CIA; and Illya Kuryakin [Armie Hammer, above] is huge, ferocious,
and powerful, the son of a Siberian exile father
and a adulterous mother. They are not
friends. In fact -- this being,
apparently, an origin story -- they hate each other, and during the film’s
first ten minutes try seriously to kill each other. And light romantic comedian Hugh “I don’t give a toss, Jones” Grant as their spymaster boss, Mr.
Waverly --???
So far this doesn’t sound much like the series we’ve loved,
lo, these many decades, does it?
But. But!
Ritchie is famous for his Sherlock Holmes films, in which
Holmes bears not much resemblance at first to Doyle’s iconic character -- but
in which the core of the character is there, and the films also feature little
nods to the original material. His “U.N.C.L.E.” is the same way. The East Berlin
scenes remind you of “Dove Affair,” the film’s safecracking sequence of
“Fiddlesticks” and “J for Judas,” Elizabeth
Debicki’s glamorous villainess of Anne Francis as Gervaise Ravel in “Quadripartite” and
“Giuoco Piano.” The carbine [above] with
telescopic sight wielded by Illya
in several scenes suggests the famous U.N.C.L.E. Special. And there are plot switches like those in
“Giuoco Piano” and “Deadly Decoy.”
Most important, the film is neither a parody nor a comedy,
but an energetic period-piece (1963) spy story with real danger, leavened by
humor in the right places. * The casting, always the tricky thing to get
right, is spot on. (Let’s be
honest. If you were to see the movie
poster [right] without the legend on it, merely the armed figures -- wouldn’t
you muse to yourself, “Gee, they remind me of Solo and Illya . . .”? ) (Let us genuflect to the God of Moviemakers
and be very glad that Tom Cruise bowed out of the project!) 
Ritchie’s visual style as a director is very much in the
manner of original series directors like Joseph Sargent and Barry Shear. The story hustles while still telling us what
we need to know. Ritchie’s trademark “flashback snippets which explain what really
happened” are sprinkled here and there. And
the almost balletic scenes of the East Berlin
car chase are amazing. Beyond that, we
get split-screen techniques in one or two places which beautifully show us
separate but simultaneous events. The
assault on Vinciguerra
Island, for example,
takes only a third of the time a conventional scene would, and gets us to the
point we really want to see: Solo and Illya going
into action as a team [above].
Grant as “Commander Waverly” [right] appears very little until close
to the climax, thus one of the tricky plot switches I mention. Grant carries off his role with an air of amused mastery, and without the “Upper-Class Twit” routine he’s known for. (“Commander,” of course, being James Bond’s
RNVR rank; and there is a reference to another Bond film as well.)
Verdict: It’s
good. Go see it. And be sure to stick around for the
credits: We’re afforded glimpses into
the lead characters’ dossiers, and the meaning of the letters U.N.C.L.E.
appear on screen. (Yes, fellow purists,
it reads “Law and Enforcement.”)
* If I have one quibble, it’s with the scene in which Solo,
fully aware that his temporary partner is being chased by guards and fired upon
by machine guns, takes the time to tune the truck radio ** and to have a drink
and a bite of sandwich before coming to Illya’s
aid. This was too much like the “Illya
fighting in the rain while Solo charms the girl” scene at the end of “Dippy
Blonde” -- far too comic. Otherwise the
humor is handled as the best of the original episodes did it: after the danger
is past.
** “Blink and You’ll Miss It" Dept.: A snippet of Hugo Montenegro’s
MfU Theme plays on the truck radio.
Best Lines:
Solo (to his CIA handler):
“You told me this was going to be a simple extraction. . . . What was waiting for me was barely
human. It tore the back end off my car.”
Illya
(after paralyzing a Vinciguerra guard with a special KGB blow, so that the
victim remains on his feet while unconscious):
“Will be like this for . . . twenty
minutes. Can’t touch.”
Waverly (to Illya): “For a special agent you’re not having a very
special day, are you?”
Illya
(softly, to the unconscious Gaby Teller):
“Sleep well, little chop-shop girl.”
Illya
(about Solo’s fence-cutting tool): “What
is that?”
Solo: “Super-hardened
boron, sharpened with a CO2 laser.” [He
watches Illya’s
glowing device melt its way through the fence links] What’s that?”
Illya: “CO2 laser. . . .
Coming?”
Solo: “Absolutely
hate working with you, Peril.” (Solo dubs Illya “The Red Peril” early on, and calls
him that with one exception throughout)
Illya: “You’re a terrible spy, Cowboy.”
And the exchange that perfectly captures the spirit of “The
Man from U.N.C.L.E.”:
(Solo and Illya watch as
Gabby’s Uncle Rudi, Victoria’s
expert torturer, who has been complaining while torturing Solo of “a glitch” in the wiring of his
electrical torture chair, burns up in said chair)
Illya: “He found the glitch.”
Solo: “Damn. I left my jacket in there. . . .”
