Clearly an origin movie hoping to turn into a franchise, but failing to hit the target on almost evey level. Supposedly a riff on "The Man From UNCLE" TV series, yet the first thing they do is change the Napoleon Solo character into Alexander Munday from "It Takes A Thief" (played by Robert Wagner in that series) Solo becomes a master thief who is forced to work for the CIA to avoid encarceration. Guy Richie, instead of directing in his familiar "Lock, Stock and Sherlock Holmes" style, tries to be something he's not, trading empty stylishness for emotional impact. Poorly constructed action scenes, where the style and humour are allowed to undermine excitement and suspence. Other scenes which are revisited and explained in flash back, in order to help the audience understand what happened previously, indicating either that the director thinks the audience are stupid, or that he didn't do a very good job in the first place. That's not to say there are not occasional good lines and nice touches sprinkled amongst the blandness, but not enough to balance the books. Meanwhile Henry Cavil is mannequin level bad. As stiff as a board in a role that requires natural charm rather than acting. Was he told to play it that way or did he decide himself? Either way, in this, he is a charisma free zone. Armie Hammer is slightly better, but also lacking in the charisma necessary to succeed in this type of role. On the other hand Alicia Vikander is far too openly emotional to make a credible German, perhaps she was just trying to make up for the other two? Hugh Grant, of all people, shows them how it's done, when he turns up as Waverly. Also half of the music doesn't fit the film well either, American Soul and Jump, which does not serve to enhance the European flavour of the setting. However the passing of time dims the memory and apparently there may be a sequel... Oh the Humanity!!!

This was a movie that made one feel good. Beautiful actors, fab outfits with exotic locations and an interesting storyline. Loved the music and a fantastic chase scene towards the end. Thoroughly enjoyable and recommended.

Such a great movie with a fun classic plot. Lots of humor! The fashion is amazing! I'm dying for a second movie.

"The Man from U.N.C.L.E." is a British/American co-production in the English language mostly, but due to the Cold War subject, other languages are included too, so a good set of subtitles may help. The director and one of the writers of this movie is Guy Ritchie and the film is closely connected to the 1960s television series. I must admit I haven't seen a single episode from this show (yet?), so I cannot talk about parallels and differences, but I somehow feel it would have been nice had they included Vaughn and/or McCallum in this 120-minute movie as a cameo somehow both actors were still performing in their 80s at that point, but well a bit of a pity they did not try or manage to convince them. Anyway, we have Armie Hammer and Henry Cavill in here and both are options to follow Daniel Craig as Bond and especially Cavill really had an aura of MI6's in here on many many occasions, in terms of looks, acting and the way the character was written you can almost call it an application. Hammer was decent too and I still think he is among the best from his age group of actors around the age of 30 currently. The biggest female part was played by Alicia Vikander in the very same year when she gave her Oscar winning supporting(?) performance. I kinda like her (how could you not) but there was something about her Gaby character that didn't feel right at all. They obviously did not want to waste Vikander's talent, but the way the character was written, also with the final plot twist, just didn't work out. It's tough to put a finger on it. As for Hugh Grant, he rose in recent years for me in how I perceive his talent/performances, especially in Florence Foster Jenkins and I am not sure what to think of him here. His character may be crucial eventually, but he also feels a bit wasted.The film also includes the likes of Groth and Berkel and as I am from Germany I was slightly surprised to see them in a Hollywood blockbuster like this one here. But I was sure positively surprised with Groth especially who could have been an amazing main antagonist in Debicki's place as she never fulfilled this role convincingly sadly, which also had to do with the way the character was written. It just did not make sense to me she could fool a super agent like Solo that easily. She also faded next to Vikander, which certainly is not a shame at all these days. So yeah, the antagonist side was definitely not the film's best and also kept it from being on par with Bond films, the better ones at least. In the second half, the film also lost itself a bit in action sequences unfortunately, gets generally a bit worse overall. The introduction to the characters and presentation of the mission were eventually maybe better than the mission itself. It could/should have ended after 105 minutes maybe. But it's not a bad film by any means, has a really good moment here and there at times and Cavill and Hammer have good chemistry as well. The ending implied a possible sequel and I would watch it I guess. All in all, the positive is more frequent than the negative and I would say it is more of a crime drama/adventure with some thriller moments than really a comedy, even if here and there the film will put a smile on your lips too, like the CO2 laser scene. Worth checking out as a whole. I give it a thumbs-up, even if it is of course never best-of-the-year material.