Guy Ritchie has been one of the consistent and prominent movie directors delivering promising action movies. Most recently, the director collaborated with Henry Cavill in The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare but before that, the actor-director duo also made another action spectacle that was unfortunately under-looked.
Henry Cavill’s The Man from U.N.C.L.E. Deserved More Attention
Henry Cavill and Arnie Hammer in Guy Ritchie’s The Man from U.N.C.L.E. Image Credit: Warner Bros.
The Man from U.N.C.L.E. helmed by Guy Ritchie has to be one of the underappreciated espionage thrillers with a roster of talented cast including Armie Hammer (Call Me by Your Name), Alicia Vikander (Ex Machina), Elizabeth Debicki (Tenet), Jared Harris (Chernobyl), Hugh Grant (Wonka) with Man of Steel star Henry Cavill. Based on the Norman Felton and Sam Rolfe-created 1964 MGM popular television series of the same name, Ritchie’s 2015 movie brought back the immersive action for the audience to witness.
However, the box office collection of The Man from U.N.C.L.E. was not what the producers and makers might have expected while receiving mixed reviews from critics. The movie was a box office bomb grossing only $108 million at the global box office against the huge production budget of $75–84 million.
Still, a 68% Rotten Tomatoes score from critics is not bad but the movie, we believe deserves more attention as the immersive action sequences and the narrative complemented well with the performances by the stars, if you are a fan of spy thrillers this movie is unlikely to bore you.
What’s The Man from U.N.C.L.E. Is About?
Henry Cavill in The Man from U.N.C.L.E. Image Credit: Warner Bros.
The Man from U.N.C.L.E. follows Henry Cavill’s Napoleon Solo teaming up with Armie Hammer’s Illya Kuryakin ordered to team up in order to stop Alexander and Victoria Vinciguerra— two Nazi sympathizers using Teller (Vikander) to build their own private nuclear weapon. The twist is, Solo is a CIA agent and Kuryakin is from KGB, and their chemistry and conflict of ideals while chasing the villains make the movie engrossing.
Set in the 1960s in the backdrop of the Cold War, the Lionel Wigram and Ritchie written movie has given fans a modern visualization of the classic television show. The official synopsis of the movie reads:
“At the height of the Cold War, a mysterious criminal organization plans to use nuclear weapons and technology to upset the fragile balance of power between the United States and Soviet Union. CIA agent Napoleon Solo (Henry Cavill) and KGB agent Illya Kuryakin (Armie Hammer) are forced to put aside their hostilities and work together to stop the evildoers in their tracks. The duo’s only lead is the daughter of a missing German scientist, whom they must find soon to prevent a global catastrophe,” (per RT).
For Ritchie, the retro espionage with modern action was his inherent attempt to make it cool. “It was important that a man is prepared to look like a tick because he’s got swagger,” the director said of Cavill’s character in the movie during his interview with Esquire.
“He’ll make gestures that are silly, but simultaneously cool. We debated: Is that silly or cool? As long as [the gestures] are manifested by the right agent, they become silly and cool. Silly is what keeps cool from having the unpleasant odor of smug,” he added.
The Man from U.N.C.L.E. is certainly not a mind-bending thriller but the movie has several promising traits in its arsenal and one of them has to be Cavill’s dashing spy attempting to stop World War III.
Watch The Man from U.N.C.L.E. on video-on-demand platforms including Prime Video, Microsoft, and Apple TV.
