Guy Ritchie directs Henry Cavill, Armie Hammer and Alicia Vikander in the big screen reboot of the seminal sixties Cold War spy TV classic.

Like Adam West, Happy Days, Star Trek, Technicolor westerns and Laurel and Hardy omnibuses, The Man From U.N.C.L.E reruns were a teatime staple from my childhood. Suave, cartoonish spy capers where, over 45 episodic minutes, watches and apples became pop art bombs and the suits were killer. It never felt dated as a child. Robert Vaughn and David McCallum were the coolest men on a mission ever. And since then studios have threatened to update it for cinemas… like they did with Mission: Impossible or The Fugitive, but not like they did with The Saint or The Avengers. We’ve had names like Tarantino, Cruise and Clooney attached (all great shouts) and for over two decades it kept brushing near but not past a green light. You get the feeling Warner Bros. eventually put it into production just to get the annual development red off their ledger. So we get the compromise casting of available and rising Cavill and Hammer, a pairing who were always going to struggle opening a movie of this size (though with their box office appeal and cool growing… maybe they were just a few years premature). And it is a tough sell to modern audiences… a forgotten property, set in period, with a focus more on glossy style than spectacular action. The leads have great chemistry, the girls have glamorous moments, the plotting is playfully light… it works, but it doesn’t astound. It certainly isn’t essential. The Man From U.N.C.L.E. ends up an amusing fancy, utterly likeable and Guy Ritchie’s most restrained caper. Well worth a watch, probably not worth the $90 million dollars gambled on it. You could pop it on at teatime and be perfectly placated.

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