Good day all. Yesterday I went to see the new Guy Ritchie film, Man from Uncle. This is a remake of the original 60’s TV show, the Man from Uncle.
I’ve never seen the original series and I’m to cheap to pay for it on Amazon streaming. I have vague recollections of it, probably from a few parts I’ve seen long ago. Therefore, I have no basis to compare it to the new movie. Saying that, I loved the movie.
Ritchie and writers didn’t try to update the movie, bringing it into the 21st century. They made it as a period piece during the height of the cold war, which is when the original series took place. This film is also an origin film, meaning that Ritchie is looking at sequels. I don’t know if those sequels will happen, but I hope they do.
As this is an origin film, it requires the intruduction of the two characters, Napoleon Solo for the Americans and Illya Kuryakin for the Soviets. For those who don’t know, the original Illya Kuryakin was played by David McCallum, best known to younger generations as “Dr. Donald “Ducky” Mallard” on the TV show NCIS. The two actors playing the leads this time around are Henry Cavill as Napoleon Solo and Armie Hammer as Illya “Red Menace” Kuryakin. They’ve also added a female lead, Alicia Vikander as Gabriella “Gaby” Teller.
The basic plot is that Gabby’s father is a former Nazi scientist now working for the Americans and has developed a new process to enrich Uranium. A criminal enterprise has kidnapped her father, who she hasn’t seen since the war ended, and is forcing him to make enriched uranium and build an atom bomb. Solo goes into East Berlin to bring Gabby back to the west with the idea that she will help him find out where her father is being held. Kuryakin is tasked with the opposite. Stopping Solo from taking Gabby to the west.
Needless to say, Solo succeeds and takes Gabby to the west. At this point his director informs him he will be working with the best agent the Soviets have to find Gabby’s father and recover him and his work. Solo is then introduced to his Soviet counterpart who is Kuryakin. I’ll leave the rest to your imagination on how the meeting went.
As I mentioned, this is a period piece and the period is the early 60’s. It looks like the producers managed to find everything they needed from that era, including guns, boats, cars and everything you need to make it seem you are in 1963. I love a good period piece when it’s done well and this was. I’m not going into the whole movie in detail. (For once) I want you to go see it. I found it great fun, the actors seemed to gel nicely and the story was fairly good and consistent.
There is one thing Ritchie did that I didn’t like. It seems he used the old idea of multiple shots in a single frame. This was a big thing back in the old 60’s action shows to both compress what was happening and make it appear to people that more was happening then actually was. Hopefully this won’t become a trend. Shakycam was bad enough.
There were a few points in the movie that I didn’t like, but they were few and far between. You will always have a few of these, but in this case, they don’t detract from the overall quality of the film. I highly recommend that you go and see this one. It’s terrific.
Thatisall
~The Angry Webmaster~
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