Whatever tough-guy notion of 1960s masculinity Robert Vaughn and David McCallum once embodied as reluctantly paired Cold War rivals has clearly gone the way of the Berlin Wall in the otherwise retro-flavored “The Man from U.N.C.L.E., ” a PG-13-rated loose-nukes caper whose target audience is too young to remember the classic spy show that inspired it — much less the once-frosty deadlock between American capitalism and Soviet communism that pits its distractingly handsome leading men against one another.
Starring Henry Cavill as American art thief Napoleon Solo and Armie Hammer as KGB operative Illya Kuryakin, Guy Ritchie’s latest feels more suave and restrained than his typically hyperkinetic fare, trading rough-and-tumble attitude for pretty-boy posturing. And though the pic is solidly made, its elegant vintage flavor simply doesn’t feel modern enough to cut through the tough summer competition.
Cavill and Hammer have each toplined major tentpoles before, so it’s something of a mystery why neither makes much of an impression here, but there’s a curious vacuum at the center of “The Man From U.N.C.L.E.” that almost certainly owes to its casting. The actors behave more like mannequins than men, modeling bespoke suits and dapper hats as they move in what feels like slow motion compared with past Ritchie pics.
Such care is effectively squandered on such material, which proves far stronger in individual moments — such as an amusing speedboat chase that unfolds while Solo enjoys a Chianti on the sidelines — than in its tired nuclear-warhead plot. While the script acknowledges the rivalry between East and West, it fails to capitalize on the tension that would have existed between Solo and Illya, who are quick to trade cultural putdowns but don’t really seem to be working for opposing sides. They duke it out in the first reel, destroying a public restroom in the process, but never again spar. This despite orders from both of their superiors to eliminate one another if necessary, passing up an incredible opportunity later in the film for a “From Russia With Love”-like fight scene(that film’s epic train tussle comes to mind) — or a more overt display of whatever physical urge these two metrosexual men from U.N.C.L.E. might be repressing.