Thursday, December 31, 2015

The Man From U.N.C.L.E (2015)


“For a special agent, you're not having a very special day, are you?”

            One of my favorite genres of movies and stories is the spy genre. My love for spy stories started thirteen years ago when I first watched the TV show Alias. Sydney Bristow was this incredibly smart woman who got out of tight situations in a pinch and figured things out in a snap. Ever since I got into the world of Alias and Sydney Bristow I have loved the spy genre. I love all the sneaking around and how the agents are always ten times smarter and ten steps ahead of everyone else. What bogles my mind is that a lot of spy stories come from true life stories especially from around the time of the Cold War era. The Russians and Americans were spying on each other like crazy. It was the biggest pissing match in international history. All of this espionage helped to spark the creation great movies and TV shows such as James Bond and The Man From U.N.C.L.E. So many still find that 1960s era of spy shows and movies interesting. Last year director Guy Ritchie made the classic TV show The Man From U.N.C.L.E into a fast paced, action packed movie set in the 1960s.
            Napoleon Solo (Henry Cavill) is an American thief turned CIA agent. His assignment is to extract a woman named Gabby Teller from East Germany. Her father is supposed to have been a former Nazi sympathizer and scientist who is now working for the US government. He was close to getting her out of Germany without incident until he realized that he had a bug planted on him when he crossed the border. The car Napoleon and Gabby are driving in is followed by Russian spy Illya Kuryakin (Armie Hammer). Illya almost gets them but Napoleon outsmarts him.

            Napoleon and Illya are forced by their governments to work together to bring down Alexander and Victoria Vinciguerra (Elizabeth Debicki) who are Nazi sympathizers and are looking to use Gabby’s father to create a new nuclear weapon. Of course Illya and Napoleon do not always see eye to eye with each other on this assignment since Napoleon is slick and charming and Illya is very severe and by the books. And of course they wind up getting along well that by the end if the movie they cannot kill each other as they were assigned to do.
Image result for the man from uncle movie
            The cast was excellent. Henry Cavill was beyond perfect as a former art thief forcefully turned CIA agent. Whenever I think of a male spy I think of him dressed perfectly and he is handsome and smooth and charming, exactly what Cavill was. Armie Hammer… whenever that man opens his mouth I melt! His voice is so deep it sounds so fake and I love it! But besides his voice he was pretty good as a spy. Hammer was excellent in all the big stunt scenes. Elizabeth Debicki I really liked. I am a fan of hers from The Great Gatsby (she was the only aspect of that movie I liked) and I was very excited to see her in something else. She was the perfect female antagonist she had that look and also charm and seductiveness.

            The Man From U.N.C.L.E was very good. I really liked how Ritchie, who also wrote the screenplay, did not take the story out of the 1960s. I appreciate so much that he did not modernize the characters and the stories. I feel like the charm of the characters, especially Napoleon, would have been lost. I also really liked the cinematography of the movie they were great reds and blues and golds. The Man From U.N.C.L.E is definitely worth seeing especially if you are like me and enjoy the spy genre. 
Image result for the man from uncle movie

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