Good Idea, Entertaining Flick

ne way to get a 1960s vibe from a remake of a 1960s TV program is to set it in 1963. That is what Guy Ritchie and company have done with “The Man from U.N.C.L.E.,” which has the right clothes and hairdos and soundtrack and cars and Cold War stuff.

Well, almost the right clothes. Illya Kuryakin, the Soviet agent (played with excellent deadpan humor by Armie Hammer) passes muster with items from the Large KGB Agent clothing line popular at the time, and the supporting cast looks present and correct.

But Napoleon Solo’s suit is too skinny, and has low-rider pants. It’s someone’s contemporary idea of what a 1960s suit should look like. 

Solo (Henry Cavill) is an American conman and thief who is blackmailed into working for the CIA. He is supposed to find a German physicist who knows how to build a nuclear weapon, and who is in the clutches of a family of evil, rich Italians.

The idea is that, with the balance of power at stake, the CIA and KGB will cooperate to find the physicist, via his daughter Gaby (Alicia Vikander), the best darn female auto mechanic in East Berlin.

In contrast to the other 1960s remake floating around (the latest “Mission Impossible” film), this one does not rely on technology. It actually makes fun of technology, ca 1963.

The film also has actors speaking lines of dialogue that are written for the amusement of reasonably intelligent adults.

Things do explode, and there are exciting car chases. But the overall pace is decidedly less frantic than the MI flicks.

There are a couple of set pieces that are very funny — one in a cafe, and one involving boats, a truck and the truck driver’s dinner.

And there is a mad scientist (Sylvester Groth), a Josef Mengele-type who has Solo strapped in an electric chair. But his knowledge of wiring is a little faulty, and some rather grisly hilarity ensues.

A good mad scientist is a rare bird in modern cinema, and Groth (as Gaby’s nasty Uncle Rudi) is the best one in decades.

Ritchie’s direction is light-hearted and visible, with split screens, flashbacks, and strategically-placed blasts of (mostly) appropriate 1963 spy music. 

The assault on the evil Italian family’s island fortress is particularly effective. Rather than chew up 10 minutes of screen time with a painstaking and tedious sequence of guns and bangs, Ritchie splits the screen up in as many as four pieces and gets the thing over with in about 45 seconds, thus maintaining the pace.

Perhaps the smartest thing about the film is the ending, when Waverly, the British guy, played by a rather tired-looking Hugh Grant, informs the team that they have another assignment.

Then, and only then, is there any attempt to explain what U.N.C.L.E. is, via the closing credits.

This avoids lengthy explanations of who is doing what and why.

Because it doesn’t matter. The important thing is that everybody looks cool while they are doing it. And in this, “The Man from U.N.C.L.E.” succeeds.

“The Man From U.N.C.L.E” is rated PG-13 for violence, suggestive content and partial nudity. It is playing widely.