Film review: The Man from U.N.C.L.E. - style and substance
Guy Ritchie's slick and sophisticated film, based on a cold-war-themed 1960s American television show, is far more appealing than his recent takes on the Sherlock Holmes stories
Following on from his two Sherlock Holmes movies, British director Guy Ritchie takes on another story driven by two male leads: The Man from U.N.C.L.E. Admittedly not as famous as Arthur Conan Doyle's novels about the Baker Street detective and his loyal sidekick Dr Watson, U.N.C.L.E. was a 1960s American television show, starring Robert Vaughn and David McCallum as two rival spies from either side of the Iron Curtain forced to work together.
Keeping the story in the same cold war era, Ritchie and his producer/co-writer Lionel Wigram bring us the U.N.C.L.E. origin story, showing how CIA operative Napoleon Solo (Henry Cavill) and KGB spy Illya Kuryakin (Armie Hammer) first come together. The reason? A nuclear scientist has disappeared and with both the Russians and the Americans looking to control the arms race, Solo and Kuryakin are sent to find his daughter, Gaby (Alicia Vikander), a mechanic working in East Berlin.
Yet no sooner has Solo outrun the relentless Kuryakin to help Gaby defect to the West, than he's forced by his paymasters (led by Jared Harris) to collaborate with his Eastern European counterpart. They're sent to investigate the flamboyant Victoria Vinciguerra (Elizabeth Debicki), thought to be fronting a criminal cadre with ties to the Nazis and plans to build an atom bomb. Working for the company? Gaby's uncle Ruddy, brother to her missing scientist father.
