Mini Review - The Man from U.N.C.L.E.

I'm away this weekend so only 2 reviews this week, this is the first one

Time to talk about another spy comedy.

Yes, I know I only talked about Spy a couple of months ago, but this movie was not a financial success, barely scraping past $100m on an $80m budget. Chances are high that the studio lost money in this production, and yet it was not critically panned, it holds a 66% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and we know far worse movies have made more

Such as that piece of sh*t. So, what was it about the Man from UNCLE that failed to connect with audiences? Well, I’m gonna take a look and see if I can work it out.

Based on 60's TV series, The Man from UNCLE follows CIA agent Napoleon Solo (Henry Cavill) and KGB spy Ilya Kuryakin (Armie Hammer) as they pair up with Gabby Teller (Alicia Vikander) to stop the launch of a nuclear missile, headed up Gabby’s parents.

When I say this movie is a spy comedy, I do use the term ‘comedy’ loosely, the film’s plot and its action is played mostly straight, whilst its counterparts SPY and Kingsman tend to play up their silliness. The comedy of the movie comes from the interactions between our leads and that’s where the movie excels. Their dynamic relies on clever banter and their general distaste for each other. It’s never laugh out loud funny but when Solo confronts Ilya about the bugs in his room, only for Ilya to show him the bugs he found in his, it did make me smile.

Unfortunately, the crux of this is that they don’t spend a lot of time on screen together, the drive of the narrative and the covers they have to take means they don’t get to spend a lot of time together and that’s a big shame. It’s not that Gabby Teller is the least interesting of the group, but she’s like the Disney Twist villain but in reverse. We think that she’s normal and that’s how we know her until it secretly turns out she’s British Intelligence and we really don’t know her that well.

So, if the comedy isn’t that great, what about the story? Well it’s relatively bland… It’s a band of former Nazis just after the war, trying to create a nuke and it’s up to our heroes to stop them. I do like that they show what each of the spies brings to the party and their weaknesses. Napoleon Solo knows how to pick locks, and has a great sleight of hand, he’s also got a pretty good memory but can often be too cocky for his own good. Also, Henry Cavill is doing a terrible accent.

Ilya Kuryakin is physically skilled, and it seems the KGB offer some more advanced resources than the CIA, so has the best tech of the 3. But he has some control issues that result in a pretty nasty temper which can often prove problematic when he has to seem weak to maintain his cover. Gabby seems to be the most impressive at keeping her cover, being more duplicitous but ultimately becomes the object of rescue, still her time on the inside did provide vital information as the climax reached its height.

It’s a pity then that the defeats seem to all come at Solo’s hands. Solo stabs a guy and is the one to keep the villain talking long enough for them to blow her up. I would’ve liked to have seen Ilya in a fight as they seem to shy away from having him do a lot on screen.

The action is also relatively underwhelming, it doesn’t have the precision of Bond or Bourne but doesn’t have the fun level of Kingsman or Spy either. And in a year where a lot of spy movies came out (Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation, Spy and Spectre) it’s critical to stand out here.

So, the generic plot with villains we don’t really see enough from for them to be interesting along and underwhelming action, what about the editing and again we have a problem. There are 2 occasions in the movie where they set up some spy stuff using moving comic book panels. This isn’t used often enough to be considered a style in its own right and it comes across as jarring. More often used is the flashbacks to 5 seconds ago routine. AUDIENCES ARE CAPABLE OF WORKING THINGS OUT, I don’t feel they were always necessary in the narrative, sometimes they add some details, but they could’ve just been added the first time.

The Man from UNCLE is not an unpleasant film to watch, and the characters, whether alone or together have enough charisma to stop you getting bored, but to be fully entertaining it really needed to up it’s game with pretty much every element. This was an ok movie, but OK isn’t really good enough in such a crowded year.

Rating 65/100