The Man From U.N.C.L.E Is Essentially Meaningless

the man from u.n.c.l.e

A big-screen adaptation of The Man From U.N.C.L.E. has been in the pipeline for decades; but the passage of time has, in some ways, helped clarify what the film needs to be. With Guy Ritchie at the helm, The Man From U.N.C.L.E. is a bright work of heightened style, in which the original series’ ’60s setting is embraced.

Essentially, it’s a piece of spy-movie kitsch, in which vintage wardrobe and genre tropes are each tried on for kicks; the film stopping just short of a spoof as it cavorts through imaginary fantasies of internationalist espionage, all speedboats and jewels and picture-postcard Fellini-homage locales.

The premise is simple: a pair of spies, American Henry Cavill (who is actually British) and Russian Armie Hammer (who is actually America), must team up to defeat a pair of evil Italians (femme-fatale Elizabeth Debicki and F1-racin’ playboy Luca Calvani) out to arm a nuclear war-head. The Yankee is debonair, suave, seductive, a natural liar and thief; the Russian giant, angry, humourless, honourable, luckless with the ladies. They’re the original odd-couple! In the middle of the two is Alicia Vikander, an East German mechanic who may not be what she seems...

Ritchie, surprisingly, handles this deliberately-generic set-up with absolute aplomb. One sequence mid-way through the film —in which a boat silently sinks underwater whilst an Italian torch-song blares— starts out funny and ends up, unexpectedly, beautiful. And, throughout, he deftly cuts between parallel action, using each strain of the story to raise the tenor of the others, creating a real energy (with longtime editor James Herbert) that keeps the film rattling.

Having cut his teeth making knockabout comedy-thrillers about grifters and double-crosses, Ritchie knows how to mete out information to create confusion, then tension, then revelation; and, in two well-mounted ‘a-ha!’ moments, he plays back scenes that, with newly-acquired information, now play radically differently.

And, when the big action set-piece car-chase climax comes —a raid on the evil Italians’ island compound— Ritchie goes all-in on the visual kitsch; mounting a wild series of split-screens in which gun-sight-viewpoints, right-to-left wipes, smash zooms, and whip pans manically keep to the groovy score. Like the film itself, it’s essentially meaningless but smartly-mounted. The Man From U.N.C.L.E. is pure popcorn movie fodder, a time-killer that won’t tax your brain, but won’t insult your intelligence, either.

fantastic four

For its first two acts, Fantastic Four is, essentially, a run-of-the-mill comic-book movie; yet another origin-story tale in which characters are blessed/curse with super-powers, then struggle with the super-responsibility that comes from then. But in its awful final act, the production’s back-story —a troubled shoot, re-shoots, the control of director Josh Trank forcibly taken away, Trank publicly pissing on the finished film— is suddenly manifest on screen; an already-shaky work falling apart amidst scenes of obvious editorial butchery.

Fantastic Four first introduces the imminent heroes/villain as science-lovin’ teens: Miles Teller (the future Mr. Fantastic) a nerd who wears glasses, has no sense-of-humour, and doesn’t quite get social cues; Jamie Bell (the imminent Thing) his loyal, gum-chewing off-sider; Michael B. Jordan (yonder Human Torch) as a car-racin’, mechanically-minded thrill-seeker and/or Angry Black Man; and his adopted sister, Kate Mara (the Invisible Woman, cue ‘Hollywood screenwriting’ gags), as a Portishead-loving egghead devoted to pattern recognition and scientific diligence. Then there’s Toby Kebbell’s black-sheep, whose name is literally Victor Von Doom, suggesting that his teen-angst persona —an emo, video-game-playing loner— will soon translate to a desire to destroy the planet.

They’re all, at first, students in a prestigious/clandestine academy, which Reg E. Cathey (Jordan and Mara’s pops) sees as beacon of scientific research, even as its shadowy, bottom-line-driven board members —personified by Tim Blake Nelson, also chewing gum— see it as a place to develop tech than can be weaponised, militarised, and monetised. In the middle of this ethical divide is a shuttle capable of interdimensional travel; which, in this reboot, soon becomes source of all those super-powers.

The first two acts —in which we’re introduced to the characters, the formative cataclysmic accident occurs, and Dr. Doom returns as villain— proceed ploddingly, formulaically, with little wit or sparkle. Aside from a few dreadfully unfunny jokes (“Oh yeah, this one’s going on Instagram!” Jordan says, when taking a picture of the Planet Zero of the parallel dimension), the tone is largely stern and serious, yet lacking any gravity. Whilst certain super-hero source-texts may lend themselves to a dark, glowering reading, Fantastic Four’s essential silliness (Mr. Fantastic stretches like rubber! The Thing’s catch-phrase is “it’s clobberin’ time!”) makes it ill-suited to such a presentation.

Teller proves himself ill-suited to the lead role in a Marvel tent-pole picture, too. He looks perpetually unconvinced with every line of dialogue he’s asked to deliver. Which, given it’s often exposition shouted out as explanation of what we’re already seeing (“he’s pulling everything into the other dimension!”, for example), is understandable. Other actors are given even less to work with; there nothing in the way of internal conflict or complicated characterisation. Bell, for example, has essentially no character to play before he’s turned into a rock-creature; and, thereafter, only given a handful of clichés to spout from within a CGI concoction.

CGI is everywhere throughout the film, and rarely does it inspire wonder, or convey anything particularly visionary. At its worst, Fantastic Four feels like another sad symbol of the state of Hollywood action epics: a bunch of pixels being moved around, fate-of-the-Earth stakes inflated to the point that it’s impossible to ‘buy in’. As villain, Kebbell’s Doom scans as a computer technician’s fantasy of omnipotence: an emo gamer moving matter with his mind, a solitary ‘artist’ with the ability to create/destroy computer-generated worlds at his whims.

When the villainous switch is flipped, and Kebbell decides that the Earth needs instant destroyin’, that’s when Fantastic 4 goes from the generic into the atrocious. Whilst a 98-minute comic-book movie sounds, in the abstract, like a pleasing antidote to blockbuster bloat, on screen the film careens towards conclusion in such a blithely-edited fashion that its ending scans as even more ridiculous than what’s preceded it.

The feeling is, essentially, like watching an old episode of The A-Team. The gang’s in dire straits, the villain is peacocking, all hope seems lost; but, yet, if you look at your watch, you realise than in 5 minutes evil will be thwarted, justice will be served, and everything will be wrapped up in a neat little package. In Fantastic Four, this happens with such swiftness that it plays as plainly truncated, and borderline nonsensical. With world soon saved by way of a simple plan and a few punches, the end finds the gang together, back at their new home base, promising more adventures in imminent future instalments. Here’s hoping not.