AVClub: "The Henry Cavill-Armie Hammer action franchise that never was"

- May 20, 2020

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

Equal parts Mission: Impossible film and James Bond movie, The Man From U.N.C.L.E. had all the makings of a summer box-office success story. But timing is everything, and someone in their infinite wisdom decided to sandwich the men from U.N.C.L.E. in between an actual Mission: Impossible film and an actual James Bond movie. Just two weeks after Rogue Nation debuted with a $55 million weekend and three months before Spectre would open to $70.4 million, The Man From U.N.C.L.E. crawled out of its first few days with just $13.4 million. There was no coming back from that kind of negative narrative, and U.N.C.L.E. left theaters with a whimper, never to join the ranks of the spy franchises it outclassed and outwitted that year.

Based on the 1960s NBC drama of the same name, The Man From U.N.C.L.E. stars Henry Cavill and Armie Hammer as CIA agent Solo and KGB agent Illya, respectively. At the height of the Cold War, the two spies are asked to work together and—with the help of a German mechanic (Alicia Vikander)—stop a wealthy Nazi sympathizer (Elizabeth Debicki) from arming a nuclear weapon. With a budget of $75 million, the film isn’t light on expensive action sequences, but where it surpasses its contemporaries is its sense of humor. Harkening back to the Bond films of the era in which it’s set, U.N.C.L.E. isn’t afraid to have fun while blowing things up. A boat chase unfolds in the background as Solo pauses for a snack; Illya and Solo diplomatically debate what to do with a captured asset in the foreground while the asset accidentally (and silently) fries in an electric chair behind them; and Debicki, as the big bad, commands the screen with authoritarian presence, at one point even silencing the soundtrack with the lift of a finger.

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