Tenet

Ohmigosh, it's a new movie...in a THEATER!

En-tropical Adventure ("Well, Try and Keep Up")
or
We Live in a Twilight World ("And There Are No Friends who Understand This Movie, Either")

Christopher Nolan finally gets to do his "James Bond" movie, but—being Christopher Nolan—it had to be with a twist. In this case it's the twist you find in a möbius strip for his "Yeah, you can only release this in theaters" spy/sci-fi hybrid Tenet.

And, yeah, at least for the first four/five viewings, it should only be seen in theaters. Having access to a "Rewind" button would only confuse the issue. Plus, the details...the details...some things will get lost on a small screen given some of the intricacies going on, and at times the film is so disorienting that a large screen will make you a bit more sure of what you're seeing.

Nolan likes to stretch the underpinnings of his movies, fracturing time-lines, setting up nesting dolls of narratives, and investigating the possibilities of the image and editing while maintaining a forward momentum. Here, though, he has it both ways.

The film begins with a terrorist attack on a Ukrainian opera house, the perpetrators appearing from the stage as if part of the performance. How they planned all this without somebody noticing off-site that a major counter-terrorist operation was being set up in the general area is one of those post-"Dark Knight" "just-go-with-it" sleights of hand that directors have been taking advantage of when going for spectacle rather than logic. But, Tenet is so full of such things that it would be better to switch one's mind off if one is to experience any enjoyment out of this.

During this sequence, Nolan has one train going forward and one back.
It's a sort of subliminal training for what we're about to see.

 

The operation is two-fold: the extraction of a personage from the scene and the retrieval of stolen plutonium and the situation is so dire that the agent we're focused on—played by John David Washington—basically has to make it up as he goes along. During the raid, he comes to understand that the plutonium is not as it appears and that, at some point, he is nearly shot by a bullet coming out of one of the auditorium steps. Part of his team is captured, and, rather than give anything away, he takes a cyanide pill. He dies.

Short movie.

He wakes up...from a medically-induced coma. He's told that he survived the cyanide...that his jaw has been rebuilt*...but he is officially "dead" and he is to recover and has been chosen for a special assignment as his willingness to take the pill rather than give away secrets makes him a valuable asset. A further briefing tells him there WAS no cyanide...("eh?"), but that his devotion and the planned mission are real. He is given a gesture—interlocking fingers—and the word "Tenet" ("It'll open the right doors. Some of the wrong ones, too" he's told in the evasive generalized way that passes for exposition in the film). 

"Is 'bunjee-jumpable' a word?"

He's taken to a facility—for a second briefing—of what his next assignment (his first as a dead man) is, more specifically what the mechanics of the assignment entails. Turns out the issue isn't plutonium, but a possible WWIII is the end-game. This turns out, also, not to be true, not in the strictest sense, but a world-ending scenario is involved. He is shown what caused that little surprise of the backwards-bullet at the Kiev Opera House was all about: that bullet was manufactured in the future with a technology that allows it to move backwards through time by means of its own inverted entropy. If that's confusing, the scientist studying the ammunition has a handy piece of non-advice that will work for the viewer: "Don't try to understand it. Feel it." Especially when you point a weapon and the bullet jumps back into the gun. The kick-back must be intense.

Already, this is a little headache-inducing. But, it would help if we recall an episode of "The Big Bang Theory" (Season 3 Episode 22—"The Staircase Implementation") and Section 9 from Dr. Sheldon Cooper's Roommate Agreement: If one of the roommates ever invents Time Travel, the first stop has to aim exactly five seconds after this clause of the Roommate Agreement was signed. "Well, that's disappointing..." is Sheldon's reply when nobody shows up. If you laugh at that, you might be alright.

Our Man in Confusion meets up with a British intelligence operative, Neil (Robert Pattinson), who helps him meet up with an arms dealer who gives him the low-down—the man who's behind (or in front of) all this reverse-entropy stuff is a Russian oligarch named Andrei Sator (Kenneth Branagh) who has seen the future and wants to exploit it to his own ends. The Protagonist (as he's called in the credits, but the arms-dealer tells him "You're the fresh-faced Protagonist, and you're as fresh as a daisy" so I will call him "Daisy") is told that he can get to Sator through his wife, Kat (Elizabeth Debicki), who is kept in a bad marriage by her error in selling Sator a fake Goya. 

That is all the story I want to relate, because at this point...or later...or earlier (I'm not sure which) my understanding—or my willingness to understand—started to get a little hazy. My appreciation for what I was seeing didn't dampen, because the logistics and the talent to pull these things off (imagine if you will a "Bourne" type fight where one fighter is moving forwards and "the other" is moving backwards) and you begin to shake your head in wonder at the logistics needed to imagine, let alone carry off, such a sequence. There's a chase down a freeway involving cars moving forwards and backwards that is as twisty and GPS-frying as all get-out, and the final showdown with troops advancing and retreating (backwards) simultaneously has to be seen to believe.

"What happened here?" "It hasn't happened yet."

Or not. One of the stipulations for the production of Tenet is that all the explosions and practical effects had to be practical—in other words, no CGI—things had to really happen. So, yes, troops are running forwards into battle-areas where explosions are reverse-sucking into the ground. Fights happen forward and in reverse. Why, Branagh even had to learn to speak backwards (with a Russian accent, yet...or "nyet"). It's all done for real, so that when things are reversed, it's the real deal backwards. This still produces a feeling of visual deja vu, where you begin to suspect everything of being reversed...at least looking for tell-tale wisps of smoke not rising, but falling.

It's happening...

It's disorienting...like a kind of "magical seeing" where thinking doesn't come into it because that would lead to some sort of synaptic anarchy that would make you distrust the simple action of putting popcorn in your mouth. At one point, "Daisy" is seen doing his customary pull-ups on a ship going backwards—he's been reversed temporally but the ships are going forwards, obviously, because that is what they do. But, from our perspective (which is constantly his) the ships are going backwards, reversing into their own wakes. Okay, but if he's inverted and doing everything backwards, what does he eat? How does he eat?Is there enough negative entropic infrastructure that they have entropic meals? At least, reverse Tang? And if everything he experiences is working backwards, I don't even want to think about how the toilets work!

Kenneth Branagh counting backwards...or is it forwards?

This leads to an audience-disconnect where you begin to suspect everything in the film of being untrue...or at least, the natural order of things. The Daniel Craig Bond's have made an entire through-line of its hero learning not to trust anything, not even his past...but, at least, he's still got his senses. Most movies endeavor—from their core—to create a belief in their reality; "Ignore the crewman out of frame with the pastry in his hand, this is true." Yes, there is music—from an unseen orchestra—and we're directing your point of view, so you don't see the reality we don't want you to see, but we're trying to make this as real as possible. Nolan is making as radical a move in breaking "the rules" as when Hitchcock killed off his leading lady half-way through Psycho: He's trying to make the "real" fantastical, in a way the Wachowski's with their computers couldn't with the Matrix movies.

It is mind-bending. And revolutionary. But, then Nolan has always played with the rules and mechanics of film, both in terms of story-telling and in its expectations. He can leave an audience gob-smacked...and deceived. Sometimes both, simultaneously.

Here's the same car-flip backwards and forwards...hope they called insurance before.

I don't know how advisable it is to question or not question the mechanics of what goes on here. In an era of "deep-fakes," one should always be suspicious of "face-value" and just not take things as they appear. Nor, can I interpret the measure of enjoyment you'll have in the movie if it doesn't make any sense. "Seeing is believing" is the old saw, and though I accepted the images, there was the doubter in my mind that kept kibitzing through the movie saying "that just wouldn't work." The answer, in retort, is to recall Hitchcock's rejoinder—"it's only a moovie."  

At least, Tenet is entertaining enough that you don't want to re-live those 2 1/2 hours...backwards or forwards.

Here's a shot from the battle-climax of Tenet:
Take a moment and think about what you're seeing here.
It looks spectacular...but is it possible?

* Yeah, that's usually not how potassium cyanide works—unless you've seen Skyfall.

Widows (2018)

A Woman Has To Be Better Than a Man
or
"What I've Learned from Men Like My Father and Harry is 'You Reap What You Sow.'"
"I Sure Hope So."

In a pre-film message to theater-goers before his film of Widows, director-co-screenwriter Steve McQueen talks about wanting to make a film of Widows since he was a kid. This might be hype on McQueen's part, but it is possible because it was originally a British TV series created by the amazing Lynda LaPlante (author of "Prime Suspect") in 1983. It spawned sequels, TV remakes, and quite the following—McQueen being one of them, who, after winning Best picture and Best Director Oscars for 12 Years a Slave, set about making his own re-do, combining the best elements of LaPlante's series, and hiring best-selling author Gillian Flynn (she wrote Gone Girl, Dark Places and Sharp Objects)—very adept at writing startling dialogue that "goes there"—and taking it out of its underworld setting and replacing it with a place where a similar forum for betrayal and criminal behavior are at their apex—the world of politics in America (specifically Chicago) circa 2018.

Does this McQueen guy have a knack for timing or what?

We start out with a sequence that traverses time and circumstance: the members of the gang led by Harry Rawlings (Liam Neeson) are seen interacting with their wives on a day of another "big job" while with every jump-cut, we see it start to go disastrously wrong. Harry canoodles with his wife Veronica (Viola Davis) as they blissfully greet the day. The Perelli's, Linda (Michelle Rodriguez) and Carlos (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo) have an argument over the financing of the shop they own together. The Gunner's, Alice (Elizabeth Debicki) and Florek (Jon Bernthal) are having breakfast together and he couldn't be sweeter, while making note of the black eye he'd given her the night before. Amanda (Carrie Coon) and Jimmy Nunn (Coburn Goss) kiss each other at the door before he leaves for his job. This is all significant.

That job goes horribly awry. As the criminals carry heavy bags of cash and throw them into the back of their van, they barely have enough time to escape before the police come. A violent chase ensues with the CPD blowing the back open of the van, leaving the criminals vulnerable to gun-fire. They manage to make it to their safe-house, but are wounded and Harry takes the wheel of the van to make their final run. But, when the garage doors opens, a SWAT team is waiting for them and riddle the vehicle with bullets until it finally explodes.

The entire team is wiped out.

Veronica wakes up, startled and alone. 

Jamahl Manning (Bryan Tyree Henry) is a Chicago crime kingpin with ambition—he's running for alderman of Chicago's south side, and he's visited by his opponent Jack Mulligan (Colin Farrell), who's come over to "keep the lines of communication open." They spar over each others' short-comings—Jamahl is a gangster and can't win; Jack Mulligan is running for the alderman job that his father (Robert Duvall) has had for many years. "Nepotism isn't illegal," Mulligan argues from both sides. The thing is, Mulligan feels the threat—not that Manning has actually threatened him—that he might not win the election that's been a Mulligan legacy. After all, both are well-known among the electorate voting for alderman—"even if they don't know what an alderman does."*

It turns out the money from the failed heist was Manning funds earmarked for Jamahl's campaign—two million dollars worth, destroyed during the final fire-fight. At Harry's funeral, Jamahl and his enforcer brother Jatemme (Daniel Kaluuya in another intense extraordinary performance**) observe the proceedings, including the younger Mulligan's condolences to the widow (what's he doing there?)

This gives Jamahl enough information to follow Veronica to her upscale condo to threaten her (and her dog—who plays a significant role) if she doesn't come up with the two million dollars lost and come up with it before the campaign is up. Where is she going to come up with two million dollars?

The secret lies with a notebook that Harry has secreted away and that Veronica acquires with the help of Harry's driver, Bash (Garret Dillahunt). In the notebook, she finds the plans for Harry's next job—a multi-million dollar heist that will solve her problems by paying back the Mannings—if she can pull it off.

But, for that, she'll need a "crew."

Who better than the wives left behind after the disastrous Manning heist? She contacts all of them and at an initial meeting in a steam-bath, only Linda and Alice show up while Veronica makes her proposal and tells them to think about it. After some soul-searching, Alice, who has desperately gone into being an escort with one particular client (Lukas Haas) and Linda decide that, if they want better lives, this is their chance, and the women begin the painstaking research and preparation to pull off the job that will save their lives.

McQueen and co-scenarist Flynn take an improbable situation and play it with a straight-faced earnestness, raising the stakes to truly scary levels of desperation that make you believe that these wives will gear up, arm themselves to the teeth and take it to "The Man" in order to right the wrongs done to them, in a world that is corrupt to the bone and dominated by males. That so much of the background is political, rather than gangland, just gives a more reliably male face to their oppressors and distances them from becoming just distaff versions of the same amorality.

They also stress the betrayal of trust among all parties. The widows have had their lives shattered by behind-the-scenes machinations that they aren't even aware of (or would believe, frankly) and it's a neat little contrivance that allows them to get their revenge and their salvations from the very same source. That it also dissolves any illusions or romanticism they might have previously had just makes their actions more empowering.

As in all the McQueen movies I've seen, the acting is always top-notch with a bit of a toss-up between Davis and Debicki of who runs away with the picture—your perception will most likely change with whoever is on-screen at the time—one can also say the same of Cynthia Erivo, who becomes the necessary fourth wheel to pull off the job. The males do a good job—to a man—of playing variations of blinkerdly self-absorption that demands to be upended.

And for those who might not "buy" the idea of a gangland criminal finding a career in politics, one can look to believable example in both fiction—in "The Godfather" story, it often stated that it was always assumed that Michael Corleone would become "Senator Corleone" or "Governor Corleone"—or reality—one can think of all sorts of real-life examples, past and present-day, of criminals as politicians, but let's be kind and not contemporary, and point to the thirty seven year career of William Bulger in the Massachusetts legislature, despite being the brother of gangster "Whitey" Bulger. A hard insider's look at both organized crime and political organizations can see parallels between corruption and power as being a heady, almost inevitable, mixture.

It's a lit match made in Hell. 

* Aldermen have several responsibilities. Depending on the municipality, aldermen meet with fellow council members monthly, twice a month or even weekly. They might also serve in emergency situations to work through issues pertaining to the area that they represent.

** There's an early scene where Jatemme confronts the two guys who were supposed to be protecting the money, but failed. Turns out they were distracting themselves by doing a rap—they're just kids. Jatemme acts as if he's interested. "Show me." Then, he takes a couple minutes watching them perform...then getting right into their faces...then gunning them down without so much as a change in expression. It's a creepy, manipulative and completely sociopathic move that jars you and Kaluuya milks it for all its worth while seemingly doing very little.

Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2

Super-Saturation
or
A Small "s" Sequel

The first Guardians of the Galaxy movie looked like such a lame concept in the trailers (and post-credits set-up of some Marvel film or other—I've lost track*) that it was a pleasant surprise for it to be not only fresh and funny, but an oddly genre-disdainful addition to the Marvel Universe, a story of space-orphans who form a Dirty Half-Dozen and quite against their intentions become a family, a dysfunctional family, to be sure, but a family nonetheless. Indeed, more power to them as they discover they're better as a group than as individuals, no matter how good they think they are, individually.

Given the success of the first film, there had to be the inevitable sequel, called (unimaginatively) Guardians of the Galaxy, Volume 2.  Same cast with a few additions, same writer-director (James Gunn, whose Super was a damning condemnation of heroic vigilantism, comic culture and the ones who are both perpetrators and victims of it) and one would hope, given his past, that any continuation would have the same affectionately anarchic spirit and mess with the formula.

Alas, it doesn't. Alack, someone must have made him read the memo's from Marvel Studios (the animated corporate logo of which is becoming increasingly long and self-important) of the audience metrics from the last one because it starts out catering to the masses with its opening sequence.** 

The self-styled Guardians are on a job protecting a group called "The Sovereigns" (as in the coinage, I'd guess, because they are gilded from head to foot like some Goldfinger fetish-fantasy) whose "something-or-other" batteries are being threatened by a "who-the-hell-cares" squid-ish attacker from outer space that's going to drain them or eat them or replace them with cheap convenience-store-branded batteries and that just ain't right. It feels like a disposable "Men in Black" sequence where they just needed a strong open and this is as good as any to show that the group is still together and functioning as a viable team.

Now, as everyone synchronizes watches and gets ready for the attack, Rocket the Raccoon (he has a lot of good disparaging nicknames in the movie) is busy...setting up a sound system? What the...? It's because one of the delights of the first film was its use of old obscure pop as a soundtrack and the sound system is to play a track...possibly as mood music for the team, distraction for the opponent, or for soundtrack sales for Marvel Studios (my guess would be the latter). Whatever. The Main Titles run along while the Guardians are battling a big-mouthed squid, while in the foreground Baby Groot is boogieing to ELO's "Mr. Blue Sky" to the delight of the audience, while the carnage goes on around him.

Cute. But derivative, one might even say pandering. And a bit of a time-waster, even if the Titles are unwinding in the background. It's a call-back to the previous film's mid-credit sequence where "potted" Groot is grooving to the Jackson's "I Want You Back"—and freezes whenever Drax (David Bautista) notices him. This sort of "memory lane" of audience highlights is lazy writing and dilutes the good will of the original as well as its uniqueness. I keep wondering if someday a movie sequel will ever be a direct copy of its predecessor and I realize that it's been done—Back to the Future II, for most of its length follows a parallel path to its Part 1. It's a weakness of series films that they hearken back to their origins, and there's nothing anyone can say except "I've got a bad feeling about this." It is lazy writing, but at the behest of producers who know it's less risky to do more of the same than tinker with what made the coffers fill the last time.

This is concerning for someone who enjoyed the original Guardians' insouciance in messing with the uber-tone of most movies based on comics, trying desperately to be taken seriously that they take on the mantle of big-m "Myth." It's indicative of less risk-taking (which made its predecessor so enjoyable). A Guardians of the Galaxy entry that took itself seriously would be as dull as Thor...or Iron Man III. Enough on that, there's a whole rest of the movie that improves things.

Ayesha...or "Her"...or "Kismet"...anyway, she's different from the Marvel comics version...i
f she weren't she'd be the Sylvester Stallone character's mother. A-Yeesh.

But, the sequence does get the movie started and introduces us to the Sovereigns, whose Queen Ayesha (Elizabeth Debicki...in an Oscar-worthy performance because, frankly, she LOOKS like an Oscar) pays the Guardians their reward, the sister of Gamora (Zoe Saldana), Nebula (Karen Gillan), the bitter daughter of Thanos (it would be Josh Brolin if he appeared) who disappeared after commandeering a ravager ship in the last movie. Fortunately, it starts to lighten up once the G.o.t.G's move away from Main Title Land. With Nebula in tow, they have to leave in a hurry when it's discovered that Rocket has stolen some of the batteries they've been paid to protect. The Sovereigns send out an impressive number of drone-ships to stop them, but a couple of light-jumps and the battered ship, which is dragging a tethered Drax held by a straining Gamora with her hair on fire (now that's a bit more like it!), crash-lands on a far-away rock.

"Some day, son, this can be all yours..."

They've been followed. The folks in the craft are Ego (Kurt Russell) and his protege Mantis (Pom Klementieff), who make the astounding revelation that Ego is the actual biological father of Peter Quill (Chris Pratt)—his real one, not his human step-father. Quill, Drax and Gamora go to Ego's planet (well...yeah, no, I'm not going to say it...spoiler) while Rocket and Groot keep an eye on Nebula while repairing their ship. The Sovereigns aren't done yet. After Yondu (Michael Rooker) has a falling out with another Ravager, Stakar Ogord (Sylvester Stallone...mm-hmm...we're starting to recycle past super-hero stars***) over child-trafficking (he's the one who plucked Peter Quill from Earth, after all, but...keeps him...because he had tiny, stealing hands), he's approached by the Sovereigns to track down the Guardians wherever in the Universe they might be.

Ego's planet...or maybe...his ego's bigger than you think.

So, there's a lot of conflict and cross-conflict: the Guardians against the Sovereigns AND the Ravagers; factions of the Ravagers against other factions of the Ravagers; Nebula against Gamora; Quill against his team-mates who are suspicious about Ego; Quill with his own suspicions about Ego (despite his finding out the answer to one of his Big Questions). With conflicts come alliances and sometimes in the most unexpected places. Old grudges dissipate with new understandings and different perspectives and the Guardians evolve into a new team, a combination of old and new members.

"We are a pair, aren't we?"

But, the biggest conflict isn't Ravager or Sovereign vs Guardian, it's Nature vs Nurture. It seems odd but wholly appropriate that by the end of Guardians, Vol. 2, there is a perverse contradiction of "there's no place like home." DNA is less important than the strings that tie us together; sure, you may find your biological father or mother, but sometimes, in their absence, you may outgrow them or even replace them with what you need. It is not as complex as Oedipus, especially in the comic-book world filled with orphans who find themselves empowered without biology having anything to do with it. Our courts (in the real, non-fictional world) favor DNA over everything when they have to solemnize the future of a child. Guardians 2 comes down hard on the side of step-parents, mentors, and...well, guardians, who will take in a waif when there's a case of need, even if the arguments against are as a big as a planet.

....ow

It's different and that's good. For all the call-backs and deja-vu moments, it doesn't run in place until it comes up with a good idea for a third movie (which a lot of sequels do). It takes a major hanging plot-point, resolves it, and moves on. That actually builds more good will in a franchise than all the repetitions of key moments can buy.

The Ego begins inflating across the Galaxy (when its Guardians are distracted)

* Thor: The Dark World, as it turns out. I actually did some research.

** And, as if to belie that opening asterisked statement,  I am wrong in this point—there IS a prelude of sorts, set in "EARTH. MISSOURI. 1980" with a CGI'd Kurt Russell (this "de-aging" stuff DOES NOT work on conventionally handsome or beautiful actors, but seemed to work well on the recreation of the skull-like countenance of Peter Cushing in Rogue One.)

*** Next example: Michael Keaton plays The Vulture in Spider-man: Homecoming.

The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (2015)

Cry U.N.C.L.E.! and Let Slip the Dogs of Summer!
or
The Better Luck Next Time Affair

Those of us "of an age" remember the 1960's (if what we did in the 70's and 80's didn't completely wipe it out) as a time burgeoning from eclectic influences in pop culture. Colors were bold, music had influences from around the world (mostly British, French, Italian, and Spanish with a smattering of Appalachian folk), literature disobeyed rules and fashion skimped on material and was mightily chromatic. Things began to go "pop" and the notion of "long-hair music" forever changed. In the era of the Beatles and Bond, things began to be taken less seriously until it fell into "camp." On TV, the transition went from black-and-white into "living color" and the shows went from filmed radio plays to bigger-budgeted escapism.  

One of those was an hour long spy-mock-drama that endeavored to bring a James Bond type of thriller to the small screen (Bond's creator, Ian Fleming, contributed the name of its hero-agent) with a touch of intercontinentalism (on a small budget) and a running nod towards Hitchcock. "The Man From U.N.C.L.E." (which stood for The United Network Command for Law and Enforcement.*) premiered on the NBC TV network in September of 1964 (a few months shy of the movie premiere of Goldfinger) and featured Robert Vaughn as American agent Napoleon Solo (Fleming's contribution) and David McCallum as Russian agent Ilya Kuryakin. Leo G. Carroll played their boss, Alexander Waverly (he played a similar head of a spy agency in Hitchcock's North By Northwest). The plots generally revolved a plot by the criminal organization T.H.R.U.S.H.** which Solo and Kuryakin would quell with the assist of an innocent civilian (usually that week's lead guest star) who would prove invaluable and then return to their ordinary lives never to be heard from again. The show ran for 4 seasons on NBC and frequently bits of episodes were joined together to form theatrical films which were most prominently shown in foreign markets. There was a spin-off: "The Girl From U.N.C.L.E." starring Stephanie Powers (as agent April Dancer—another Fleming name) and Noel Harrison, but it lasted one season.

That was then; this is now.  An "UNCLE" film has been in development for years with various enticing elements attached, but when the chips fell, Guy Ritchie was in the director chair, and re-united with his Sherlock Holmes co-screenwriter Lionel Wigram to make an updated version of the film. Just as with that film, the two tinker with expectations while trying to remain somewhat true to the spirit of the thing.

So, how is it?  Pretty luke-warm for a Cold War film.  It is an origin story of sorts, set in 1963 with a threat of such high seriousness and nuclear repercussions that the CIA and KGB must unite to try and stop it. The recruits are Napoleon Solo (Henry Cavill—who doesn't have Vaughn's lizard-like charm, but replaces it with a winsome mean streak) and Ilya Kuryakin (Armie Hammer, just fine, thank you), just like the series. But not like the series. Solo has a history of theft, smuggling and black marketeering from his days at the end of World War II (although Solo looks a bit young to have been serving at the time) and Kuryakin is humorless, abnormally strong (he yanks the boot off a car at one point in the film) and is reported to be slightly psychotic from childhood traumas. Well, that's no fun, but it does set up the sort of bitchy, bickering banter that the Holmes films are known for, some of which works and some of which feels like filler.

The collaboration does not start off well.

The matter at hand is an Italian industrialist couple, the Vinciguerras's (Luca Calvani, Elizabeth Debicki) with ties to former Nazis who—for whatever reason—are trying to develop a nuclear bomb. Not nice. The reason Solo and Kuryakin are collaborating is that both agents were trying to get their hands on one Gabby Teller (Alicia Vikander), whose father is working with the Vinciguerra's to develop the bomb. Solo manages to smuggle her out of East Berlin, much to the consternation of Kuryakin, who is trying to prevent it. This forces the two sides to cooperate, although both agents are privately advised to steal the back-ups of the bomb plans even if they have to kill the other to do so. Not the most viable of partnerships.

And if their rivalry doesn't put the kibosh on the operation, Gabby's loose cannonry certainly might. She trusts Solo a bit (he did, after all, get her out of East Berlin), Kuryakin, not at all—and he's the one tasked with posing as her fiancé in the hopes that she can contact her long-missing Daddy working for the enemy. It is the flimsiest of spy-schemes but it beats a high-stakes poker game or most of the other UNCLE strategies on the TV show. While Solo turns on the charming roguishness with the Vinciguerra's (particularly the Mrs.)...

...Kuryakin and Teller try to pose as a happy couple in love, something the Russian has to be constantly coached at by both Solo and Teller, as he is not very good at staying in character. He also has a nasty habit of losing his temper and using his martial arts training, even though he's supposed to be posing as an architect. Considering he's being watched constantly by Vinceguerrian hoods, you would think he'd have a little more control over himself. How long has Kuryakin been an undercover agent, anyway? 

The character arcs of the two agents are rather obvious—they start out as the best of enemies and after some softening up, whether by feminine charm or by Nazi-inspired torture, they become the worst of friends. Each has more than enough opportunity to irritate the other—they both manage to "bug" the other metaphorically and technologically—but stray instances of rescuing the other, even if deliberately delayed after initial second thoughts, makes them realize that they have each others' backs, even if secretly imagining a target over-layed there. It's a wonder with all the bickering they get any work done and it becomes apparent fairly early on who the prime movers of the opposite camps are.

For the best thing about The Man From U.C.L.E. is, contrarily, The Women: Vikander's Gabby Teller is presented as an innocent—the Hitchcock innocent in over their head (which was a much used trope of the original TV series)—but she quickly displays a better understanding of her role than the uptight Kuryakin does, and her adaptability and her quick judgment in rolling with changes in strategy makes her a better insurgent than Solo, who always manages to stick out like a superbly tailored sore thumb. And the actress has more fun with her role than either of the two leads, frequently being more engaging and entertaining—there's a lovely moment where she boogies to vintage rock in the background while Kuryakin tries to concentrate on a focusing chess game despite the irritation of his lively room-mate.

Then there's the villainess, played by Debicki. Tightly coiffed and haute coutured to maximum advantage, she resembles nothing so much as a blonde Audrey Hepburn morphed into a cutthroat assassin. She's gorgeous, but that's not the main reason you wouldn't want to turn your back on her, and Debicki invisibly sashays between cooing hostess and sociopathic evil without breaking stride. Her screen-time is not much, but she manages to be always one step ahead of her co-players, both in dominating a scene and the story.  The actor playing her husband barely registers—it's clear she's in charge even if she wouldn't be caught dead wearing a pant-suit.

That the women in U.N.C.L.E. are far more interesting that the titular males seems a little surprising and a bit vexing—maybe we've seen the back-biting, bitching male co-workers too much in Ritchie's "Sherlock Holmes" movies. And like those, the movie has an over-abundance of style—the period details are fun and distracting, the fashion is really well-done—if only the central roles were as nicely tailored—and the soundtrack is a bold blend of brash Italian stylings with glimmers of other pop fads from the 60's—there's even a barely discernible nod to Jerry Goldsmith's theme from the TV show. It's the one hint of subtlety to the score which is refreshingly free from being the musical paste that has become more of the norm these days and is more of an accompaniment than trying to "blend."

But, there should be more to a movie than some good elements. However fresh some things are, it can not keep the whole thing from feeling a little stale. One wishes for a little more fun, a bit more wink, which, even in its earliest days, the series managed to pull off.  

Open Channel D (or, at Best, C-)

Mr. Waverly (Hugh Grant) gets the very predictable last word.

* The series had a nice joke at the end of the weekly credits: "We wish to thank the United Network Command for Law and Enforcement without whose assistance this program would not be possible."

** It was never really established what the "THRUSH" acronym stood for but it has been widely accepted as The Technological Hierarchy for the Removal of Undesirables and the Subjugation of Humanity—a name that probably wouldn't qualify it for 501(c)(3) status.