THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E. : Wednesday 19th August 2015.

'THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E.' which I saw earlier this week had its roots as a television series which ran originally from September 1964 until January 1968 across 105 episodes and launched the careers of Robert Vaughn and David McCallum as American Agent, Napoleon Solo and Ukranian Agent, Illya Kuryakin, respectively. Hugely successful with spin off comic books, novels, TV Annuals, merchandise, soundtracks and feature length episodes this was another espionage drama born in the 60's in a similar frame as Bond and 'Mission : Impossible' that was ripe for big screen treatment. And so Guy Ritchie is the man for the job tasked to recreate the 60's in his US$75M Directed offering that has for many years lingered in development hell as Directors of note (including Matthew Vaughn and Steven Soderbergh), Writers of repute (including Quentin Tarantino) and big name actors (including Cruise, Clooney, McGregor, Reynolds, Bale, Tatum, Gosling, Damon, Fassbender, Cooper, DiCaprio and Crowe) all came and went. As well as Directing, Ritchie also aided in devising the story, wrote the Screenplay and Produced too.

The story takes us right back to the beginning before British CIA Agent Napoleon Solo (Henry Cavill) and Russian KGB Agent Ilya Kuryakin (Armie Hammer) reluctantly join forces in the 1963 Cold War Era to thwart an evil foe intent on starting a nuclear attack. The film opens with Solo having to extract Gaby Teller (Alicia Vikander) from East Berlin in a car chase through the back streets of the divided and heavily armed city chased on foot and in car by Kuryakin. Teller's father is a WWII Nazi Scientist turned American collaborator who is being held by wealthy shipping company owners Alexander and Victoria Vinciguerra (Lucas Calvani and Elizabeth Debicki respectively) to build their own nuclear device.

Having evaded Kuryakin so far and extracted the girl, Solo is confronted with his KGB nemesis once more in a public toilet block where a fight breaks out with the Russian gaining the upper hand this time before being interrupted by each of their respective handlers. At this point the two are instructed that they must join forces to prevent the nuclear weapon from being finalised, and in turn secretly secure the design schemes for their own governments.

As the story moves to Rome, so meetings are engineered with the Vinciguerra's with the trio of Solo, Kuryakin and Teller all acting undercover and incognito to win favour and gain access to their plans. The two Agents infiltrate a shipping yard owned by the Vinciguerra's and after finding traces of Uranium they trip the alarms, alert the guards which results in a foot chase and then a boat chase as they seek to get clear and away.

Following this Solo and Kuryakin are brought together by Alexander Waverly (Hugh Grant) a high ranking MI6 Officer who reveals to the pair that Teller is in fact an Undercover Agent too working for him. The three successfully manage to infiltrate the Vinciguerra's private island compound where a little bit of torture, killing, maiming and chasing goes on before Alexander is killed and Victoria makes off by boat with the finished nuclear warhead. Needless to say Victoria doesn't get too far before her attempts to escape with her payload are thwarted at the end of a second device that is able to lock onto the first being carried on the boat. Farewell Victoria to a watery grave!

Despite saving the world from nuclear undoing, and the action & adventure that the two have been through, Kuryakin remains untrusting of Solo, until the latter makes a gesture that shows the former he has some integrity, honesty and responsibility. As the three Agents drink to their success on the rooftop of the Hotel looking across Rome, Waverly advises them that their respective countries have reassigned them to a new international organisation under his command - code name U.N.C.L.E. (United Network Command for Law and Enforcement) and they're off to Istanbul. Cue the credits!

The film features many of the Ritchie touchstones including the use of split screen to retain various areas of focus at once; his use of humour to provide some levity and a strong enough recreation of the era. For a 1963 set film the representation of that time is convincing enough, it looks & feels stylish, but the story is fairly average fare only, the action is nothing to write home about, the dialogue a little clunky and strained, and I felt at times that the pace laboured along leaving me wanting more. Ritchie has done some great work with 'Lock, Stock', 'Snatch' and his two more recent 'Sherlock Holmes' outings, but we know too he can give us average fare as seen previously with 'RocknRolla' and 'Revolver' and I would place this latest offering in that bracket too.

You don't have to see this on the big screen and can wait for the DVD or BluRay release to save yourself $20. So far at the time of writing, the film has recouped about half its investment.

-Steve, at Odeon Online-