Horst in Translation ([email protected])
"The Man from U.N.C.L.E." is a British/American co-production in the English language mostly, but due to the Cold War subject, other languages are included too, so a good set of subtitles may help. The director and one of the writers of this movie is Guy Ritchie and the film is closely connected to the 1960s television series. I must admit I haven't seen a single episode from this show (yet?), so I cannot talk about parallels and differences, but I somehow feel it would have been nice had they included Vaughn and/or McCallum in this 120-minute movie as a cameo somehow both actors were still performing in their 80s at that point, but well a bit of a pity they did not try or manage to convince them. Anyway, we have Armie Hammer and Henry Cavill in here and both are options to follow Daniel Craig as Bond and especially Cavill really had an aura of MI6's in here on many many occasions, in terms of looks, acting and the way the character was written you can almost call it an application. Hammer was decent too and I still think he is among the best from his age group of actors around the age of 30 currently. The biggest female part was played by Alicia Vikander in the very same year when she gave her Oscar winning supporting(?) performance. I kinda like her (how could you not) but there was something about her Gaby character that didn't feel right at all. They obviously did not want to waste Vikander's talent, but the way the character was written, also with the final plot twist, just didn't work out. It's tough to put a finger on it. As for Hugh Grant, he rose in recent years for me in how I perceive his talent/performances, especially in Florence Foster Jenkins and I am not sure what to think of him here. His character may be crucial eventually, but he also feels a bit wasted.The film also includes the likes of Groth and Berkel and as I am from Germany I was slightly surprised to see them in a Hollywood blockbuster like this one here. But I was sure positively surprised with Groth especially who could have been an amazing main antagonist in Debicki's place as she never fulfilled this role convincingly sadly, which also had to do with the way the character was written. It just did not make sense to me she could fool a super agent like Solo that easily. She also faded next to Vikander, which certainly is not a shame at all these days. So yeah, the antagonist side was definitely not the film's best and also kept it from being on par with Bond films, the better ones at least. In the second half, the film also lost itself a bit in action sequences unfortunately, gets generally a bit worse overall. The introduction to the characters and presentation of the mission were eventually maybe better than the mission itself. It could/should have ended after 105 minutes maybe. But it's not a bad film by any means, has a really good moment here and there at times and Cavill and Hammer have good chemistry as well. The ending implied a possible sequel and I would watch it I guess. All in all, the positive is more frequent than the negative and I would say it is more of a crime drama/adventure with some thriller moments than really a comedy, even if here and there the film will put a smile on your lips too, like the CO2 laser scene. Worth checking out as a whole. I give it a thumbs-up, even if it is of course never best-of-the-year material.
