I am not a fan of updating old TV series as big feature films, even when it sometimes works (like The Fugitive).  I would rather recall the old shows with fondness (whether they were good or not) and spend my movie money watching original stories.  But Hollywood insists on remaking stuff, so I am more than happy to review said stuff.

Guy Ritchie’s new old movie is The Man from U.N.C.L.E., starring Henry Cavill in the old Robert Vaughn role of American agent Napoleon Solo, and Armie Hammer in the old David McCallum role of Russian agent Illya Kuryakin.  The stars seem to be having fun with their roles, especially Hammer and his quirky Russian accent.  This guy is a good actor who is still looking to find his signature role.

I appreciate keeping the plot in the early 1960s, just as the TV series did.  I’ve always thought the James Bond series should someday be rebooted back to the ’60s to start over; that’s what this film is doing.  And Ritchie’s film emulates the look of that era, and of those films, with crazy split screen images, plenty of bold musical choices, and pretty girls in miniskirts and with very long eyelashes.  The story is a good one for a Bond-like adventure, though it seems awfully familiar.

Despite the supposedly witty banter (Solo calls Kuryakin “the Red Peril,” and if one misses the first mention, one wonders why he keeps calling him Peril throughout the story) and decent action sequences and rather cool espionage stuff, I was pretty well bored by the whole enterprise.  Alicia Vikander, who was so impressive in Ex Machina, is completely colorless here, and even the arrival of Hugh Grant cannot generate excitement.  The villains (Italians!) are uninteresting, the music is poorly chosen, and the story actually seems overwritten.  I’m sure the plan is for this to become a franchise for Warner Bros.; I rather hope it fails.  ☆ ☆.  25 August 2015.