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

Directed by:  Guy Ritchie

Starring:  Armie Hammer, Henry Cavill, Alicia Vikander, Hugh Grant, Jared Harris, Elizabeth Debicki

The Man From U.N.C.L.E. is a throwback to a kinder, gentler spy thriller, if there is such a thing.    There is violence to be sure, but there is also style and beautiful art direction.    Its trio of heroes are brutish KGB agent Ilya Kuryakin (Hammer), suave and unflappable CIA agent Napoleon Solo (Cavill), and German chop shop mechanic Gaby Teller (Vikander), who may be able to help the agents track her nuclear scientist father held hostage by rich Italian terrorists.   

Based on the 1960's TV series and set in the early days of the Cold War, The Man From U.N.C.L.E. isn't full of choppy editing and guys like Ethan Hunt wearing masks to fool his enemies.     Its villains' goals are modest.    They want to manufacture a nuclear warhead to blackmail other nations and enrich themselves further monetarily.    How early in the Cold War?    John F. Kennedy was still making speeches on TV.   

The Cold War,in my estimation, was a humungous waste of resources and money sparked by fear and hubris.    Organizations like the KGB and CIA were more concerned with what their enemies might do as opposed to what they are actually doing.    They kept each in business for decades and in the end the Soviet Union fell anyway without a single shot being fired or a single bomb dropped.     Then, attention was turned to the Middle East and has stayed there ever since.    Like George Carlin said, "We couldn't wait for the Cold War to be over so we could go play with our toys in the sand."

The Man From U.N.C.L.E., like numerous Bonds and Mission: Impossible films, has its heroes chasing a computer disk.    An early disk, but a disk nonetheless.    What they are after doesn't matter anyway, but even then so much time and energy was poured into possessing a disk which would stop a nuclear war.    Weeks later, someone else will come up with another one and the chase begins again.     This doesn't occur to any intelligence organizations in this film.    Their focus was one-upmanship in an ever escalating international pissing contest.

Guy Ritchie directs The Man From U.N.C.L.E. with plenty of style and transports us back to early 1960's Europe in every way.     The destruction of World War II still casts a pall over rebuilt Europe and former Nazis were recruited to help either the Soviets, the Americans, or both.     We see flash and glitz just beyond the Berlin Wall.     The overall tone is one of amusement.     Solo and Kuryakin clash with their personal and professional styles.    Solo never seems to be worked up over anything, while Kuryakin would be the type of guy sentenced multiple times to anger management classes once his KGB career was over.    Gaby can only shake her head watching these guys, but she isn't just around as window dressing.    She has skills and a purpose that is revealed later.    

Hugh Grant also lends sly sarcasm as a British operative who plays a key part in the film's final 45 minutes.    He is not a villain, but he sure could be.    The Man From U.N.C.L.E. isn't thrilling or pulse pounding.     It maintains a nice rhythm and feels no need to pound us over the head with a chase a minute.    I only counted one fistfight in the whole movie, so thankfully we were spared arms being bent in ways they were not intended.     There are shootouts, but not bloodbaths.     The Man From U.N.C.L.E. feels like a spy film made in the early 1960's that was kept in a vault until 2015.   That's a compliment.