In
The Man From U.N.C.L.E., director Guy Ritchie concocts a slick,
hugely entertaining paean not only to
the TV series he’s re-working, but to Sixties
spy movies (and, indeed, European cinema of the era) in general. The result is a real treat for fans of the genre, full
of knowing nods to specific films, but not merely a succession of references.
While he could have used the same exact ingredients of gorgeous Sixties
fashions, stunning locations, and sexy stars to simply recreate a typical spy
film of that era (and I admit, I probably would have settled for it), Ritchie
instead mixes up a whole new cocktail with those familiar flavors. Before we
discuss that appealing tipple, however, let’s examine those ingredients on
their own.
The sexy stars in question are
Henry Cavill (The Cold Light of Day)
stepping into the shoes of Robert Vaughn as American agent Napoleon Solo, Armie
Hammer (J. Edgar) taking over from
David McCallum as Russian agent Illya Kuryakin, Alicia Vikander (The Fifth Estate), and Elizabeth Debicki
(The Night Manager), playing,
respectively, the somewhat stock roles from the TV series of the scientist’s
daughter (a common variety of “the innocent” who was swept up in the espionage
each week) and the femme fatale. Even U.N.C.L.E. boss Mr. Waverly (played on
the series by octogenarian Leo G. Carroll, essentially reprising his spymaster
role from North by Northwest) cuts a debonair figure this time around, as
played by suave 55-year-old Hugh Grant. All of them look spectacular, and show
off costume designer Joanna Johnston’s (Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation) incredible Sixties-styled fashions to
maximum effect… but they’re also all quite good in their roles!
Cavill demonstrates all the
charm and good humor necessary to play Napoleon Solo (a character first dreamed
up by none other than James Bond creator Ian Fleming*) and consequently manages
to come off as a roguish ladies’ man rather than a
leering Eurospy-type creep.
He’s clearly studied Vaughn’s cadences, and is up to the task of delivering all
the verbal sparring the script (by Ritchie and Lionel Wigram) supplies him
with, whether bickering with Illya or flirting with Debicki’s deliciously
villainous villainess Victoria Vinciguerra. Hammer’s Illya Kuryakin is a much different
character from McCallum’s, affording him the opportunity to really make the
role (in this incarnation) his own. He, too, proves up to the task. This Illya
is a man of great passions. Imbued with as much DNA from Robert Shaw’s psychopathic
Bond baddie Red Grant as McCallum’s Illya, he has a violent temper (which may
disturb some fans of the series), but also a charming vulnerability. Hammer
finds a great balance between the two, and makes his Illya a convincingly
complex character when he easily could have come off as a Russian stereotype.
Cavill and Hammer have a great rapport, and neither makes the deadly mistake of
confusing cool with careless. This was the undoing of top tier actors Ralph Fiennes and Uma Thurman in the 1998 movie of
The Avengers. The best Sixties spy heroes could retain their
composure and decorum in the worst possible situations without defusing those
situations of their suspense, and that was a quality fairly unique to the
decade. But happily, Cavill and Hammer manage to recapture it.
Coming off of
Ex Machina and
already lined up to play opposite Matt Damon in the next Bourne movie, Alicia
Vikander is undoubtedly one of the most exciting and talented young actresses
out there right now. Her role as Gaby Teller, the scientist’s daughter who seems
to harbor a secret agenda of her own, may not be as demanding as playing a
newly sentient machine in
Ex Machina
or a grief-stricken student turned WWI nurse in
Testament of Youth, but the uncommonly talented Vikander imbues
Gaby with enough strength and moxie to elevate a somewhat underwritten role to
scene-stealing proportions. And her fellow female Debicki accomplishes the same
feat, really relishing her role as the movie’s primary antagonist. Victoria is
no mere henchwoman; she is the mastermind behind a nefarious organization’s
nuclear terrorism. James Bond never faced a female mastermind in the Sixties,
but they were more common on
The Man From
U.N.C.L.E., and Debicki stands right alongside the best of them (the very best of them being Anne Francis as Gervaise Ravel in two
first season episodes). She’s a
treat to watch, and I wanted more of her character on screen. Finally, Grant is
just fantastic as Waverly, doing more of an homage to Carroll than I would have
imagined, and turning a small part into a very memorable character.
Besides the stars and the
Sixties fashions, the thrilling locations are key to any great spy movie, and Guy Ritchie
seems well aware of that, making the most of Rome, the Italian countryside,
and, in an opening sure to please spy fans everywhere, divided Berlin. Cinematographer
John Mathieson is no stranger to recreating that Sixties film look, having done
so on
X-Men: First Class, and he
juggles a number of disparate styles of the era in this film and makes them
cohesive. But my favorite look may have been the grainy, gritty approach to
Checkpoint Charlie and East Berlin. The opening climaxes in a spectacular wall
crossing, which, as I’ve said often, is pure catnip for this spy fan.
If the Checkpoint Charlie
business automatically recalls the second Harry Palmer movie with Michael
Caine,
Funeral in Berlin, a scene
between Solo and his CIA boss, Sanders, played by Jared Harris (remember, this
movie is an origin story, and at the beginning Napoleon and Illya work for
rival services, not U.N.C.L.E.) recalls
The Ipcress File. In gourmet Palmer
style, Solo (in apron) cooks a truffle risotto for Gaby. Sanders walks in and
chews him out, reminding him he’s serving out the equivalent of a prison
sentence for the CIA (like Palmer’s indentured servitude to MI5)—and remarking
that the Agency doesn’t pay him enough to put truffles in his risotto. If this
interplay reminds you of that between Palmer and Col. Ross (Guy Doleman), it’s
assuredly not coincidental! In fact whole chunks of the first act come directly
from
The Ipcress File. (The third Palmer movie,
Billion Dollar Brain, is not left out, either; the end titles
deliberately reference Maurice Binder’s main titles for that film.) And,
amazingly, this bit of business isn’t the only shout-out to Doleman in Ritchie’s
movie! His
Thunderball character,
Count Lippe, also gets a namecheck later (albeit with a slightly different
spelling), sure to elicit guffaws from knowledgeable Bond fans in the audience.
From Russia With Love,
Goldfinger,
The
Quiller Memorandum, and the Eurospy genre as a whole are also among the
numerous filmic allusions on display. (From
Goldfinger alone we get a vault door, a helicopter, and an Aston Martin, with DB5's proving a unifying factor in
Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation,
The Man From U.N.C.L.E., and,
based on the second trailer,
SPECTRE!) But as I said in my introduction, Ritchie
isn’t interested in simply blending together classic bits into a straight
pastiche. While the Eurospy presence is undeniable (particularly in
Daniel Pemberton’s John Barry-meets-Ennio Morricone score, whose screaming vocals in
later tracks would have been as at home in an Italian spy movie as a Spaghetti
Western), Ritchie hasn’t constructed his own Italian-style spy movie in the
same way
the Italians themselves did it in the Sixties. Instead, his stylistic
approach seems to be more “What if Fellini had made spy movies?” Ritchie’s
camera luxuriates in the
La Dolce Vita-style
decadence of Roman high society (Vikander takes a sip at one point from the Trevi Fountain), and gauzy filters in loving close-ups of
Debicki recall Antonioni more than James Tont. (It should be noted that these
homages are purely aesthetic and not artistic; Ritchie has no interest in the
themes explored by these Italian auteurs. Indeed, his
Man From U.N.C.L.E. is so thematically slight as to be ethereal.)
Other stylistic influences come
from the French New Wave, though some feel filtered through Quentin Tarantino’s
modern day appropriation of them. There are many cleverly-edited flashbacks and
time shifts throughout the movie (useful for revealing little bits of
information after the fact, necessary in any good con or caper flick), and when
we learn about Napoleon Solo’s background, it’s courtesy of the KGB’s dossier
on him as presented to Illya. This comes in flashback as he watches the calculating Solo
tracking him in the present, and since the briefing is in Russian, the information
is delivered to audiences largely in subtitles (cutely designed in a font
evocative of the original
Man From
U.N.C.L.E. title treatment). It’s an odd choice, but effective. I suspect
it will pay off even more on subsequent viewings. I also suspect that the pockmarked Jared Harris, in his gray fedora, is intended to resemble
Eddie Constantine, who, in the role of Lemmy Caution, straddled the worlds of Eurospy and French New Wave when Jean-Luc Godard elected to make one entry of the Caution series into an art film, as
Alphaville.
One thing Ritchie isn’t
particularly interested in is action scenes, and he makes this clear from the
start. While he knows he’s got to deliver his audience a few
bona fide Bond-style setpieces in this
genre (like the escape from East Berlin and a car chase that precedes it), he’s
much more interested in the luxurious and tactile trappings of the spy genre.
In the movie’s best sequence, Solo enjoys fine food and drink, to the
accompaniment of an Italian ballad, in the cab of a truck as Illya engages in a
furious, fiery speedboat chase behind him. The chase (itself a nod to
From Russia With Love) plays out
entirely in the background, seen through the windshield or in the truck’s
rearview mirror, while our focus remains with Solo enjoying his meal. It’s a
hilarious sequence, but also clearly outlines Ritchie’s own priorities and his
fairly shrewd deconstruction of the spy genre (Sixties variety) down to its
basest elements. Genre fetishes like good living and bespoke tailoring take priority here over
fisticuffs. (Solo’s impeccable fashion sense makes for a good running gag, and in one hilarious scene that actually [probably inadvertently] ties in with
The Return of the Man From U.N.C.L.E., he and Illya pit their senses of style against each other while critiquing Gaby's wardrobe.)
Another key action scene, late in the film, is presented in elaborate
Thomas Crown (or
Woodstock)-style splitscreen. This technique again takes the
emphasis off of the action itself and onto style—in this case cinematic style
rather than culinary or sartorial. All this isn’t to say that there aren’t entirely
satisfying legitimate action sequences in the film, but to illustrate that they
aren’t Ritchie’s priority… an approach I found refreshing, and one which
clearly sets
U.N.C.L.E. as far apart from Bourne and Bond and
Mission: Impossible as its period
setting.
Those hoping for nostalgic
reminders of the TV series may be a bit disappointed. Those things are all there
(the gun, the theme, the acronym), but all in basically blink-and-you’ll-miss-them
cameos rather than lovingly fetishized. (Jerry Goldsmith’s theme gets literally
only a few bars, played on a radio—and not even from the most recognizable
bit.) But that’s okay. Because while every little detail may seem like the most
important thing when viewed through the filter of childhood nostalgia, the real
essence of
U.N.C.L.E. is very much on
screen. It’s a Russian and an American working together at the height of Cold
War tensions. It’s rich characterizations and onscreen chemistry. And it’s
style. Oodles and oodles of style. Guy
Ritchie recognizes this, and because of that he’s delivered one of the most
satisfying TV-to-movie remakes since
The
Fugitive.
*While Fleming's role in developing The Man From U.N.C.L.E. has been often exaggerated over the years, one contribution that was undoubtedly his was the name "Napoleon Solo." Interestingly, some elements of his Solo (from a memo reproduced in Time Life's DVD box set of the series) that didn't make it into Norman Felton and Sam Rolfe's TV show, like his penchant for cooking, manifest themselves in Ritchie's Solo.
