The Man From U.N.C.L.E. is directed and written by Guy Ritchie, and stars Henry Cavill, Armie Hammer and Hugh Grant. It was released on Thursday 14th of August in Australia.
The Man From U.N.C.L.E. tells the story of two secret agents, both on opposite sides of the Cold War, who are forced to work together to stop an evil criminal who has a nuclear device.
I was really excited for this movie when I first saw the trailer for it as I love spy movies to death. I could watch spy movies all day and not be bored afterwards. And this is a proper spy movie of the 60's, with it's silly gadgets, and it's silly jokes, and it's silly nature. It's probably even more silly due to the fact that its partly written by Guy Ritchie, who is a great writer of silly comedic-serious movies, such as "Snatch" and "Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels". And while the jokes didn't hit as well as they do in his other films, they still come off well enough to entertain. Henry Cavill was good as the brilliant, sophisticated spy, which he played very well. The first chase in this scene was absolutely brilliant and got me hooked into it, with back stories playing out while silly humour was used to keep the action and chase interesting.
There was some problems with this movie though. One notable problem is because of the silly hunour used throughout the movie, it makes the serious bits of the movie less important. We don't feel as much as attachement to the characters because we haven't had a chance to really get to know them, with so much humour and back and forth insults filling up scenes. The plot was also something we have all seen and heard before, not offering much to the table. Actually, this plot is derivative of every James Bond movie in existence.
Another thing that worked in the beginning but then became less and less effective was the use of "flashback reveals" where they go to a flashback to reveal certain things that wasn't revealed at first. This was good the first time, as they filled in scenes so you could understand what the plan was. This became less and less effective, after they used it about 3 or 4 times. It got to the point where I felt like they removed half the scenes so they could add them in these "flashback reveals" just so the audience could go "oh, nice twist there!"
The characters were very bland as well. Besides the back story given at the start, not much more is revealed about them, and the rest of the movie is about the mission.
The directing of action scenes were very annoying with shaky cam involved, but used in such a way that it focused more on the trees then the action. The camera would be following someone riding a bike and it would shake so much that all I saw was trees and the sky. How this added to the value of the film, we will never know.
All in all, The Man From U.N.C.L.E. is a silly fun experience, but riveted with annoying loopholes and action scenes that requires slow motion to see what on earth is going on. I would reccomend watching this movie when it comes out on DVD, there are more important films out at the momment. I give this film a 3 out of 5.
