The Man from U.N.C.L.E.
2015
*½
Director: Guy Ritchie
Cast: Henry Cavill, Armie Hammer, Alicia Vikander, Elizabeth Debicki, Jared Harris, Hugh Grant, Luca Calvani, Sylvester Groth
It's 1963 and a nuclear scientist Udo Teller, a former Nazi who works for the U.S. government, has disappeared. To solve the mystery, CIA agent Napoleon Solo must first smuggle Teller's daughter out of East Berlin and then grudgingly partner with KGB agent Illya Kuryakin. After two forgettable but highly lucrative Sherlock Holmes movies, Guy Ritchie gives us a good looking but incredibly dull big screen adaptation of the popular TV series which ran from 1964 to 1968. It features two charmless heroes played with impressive woodenness by Henry Cavill and Armie Hammer. In A Game of Shadows, Ritchie wasted Noomi Rapace in a thankless supporting role, and now he repeats the feat with another fine Swedish actress, Alicia Vikander, who is nevertheless the best thing in the movie along with the groovy soundtrack. There is plenty of action, romance, and international intrigue, and obviously a nuclear weapon since it's the Cold War, but Ritchie cannot produce anything original or even half interesting out of the material.
