My Review of "The Man From U.N.C.L.E."

The Man from U.N.C.L.E. is a spy action movie that came out in 2015. I'm surprised it was outside of my radar for so long. Recently, I've started getting into spy movies and this one pretty much has everything on paper. There's a great cast, great director and they still used a lot of practical effects to make the movie.

The movie starts out with the introduction of Solo who is an American spy. He wasn't always an American spy he was better known as an international thief. Apparently he was so good the only way they were ever able to apprehend him was by sheer luck.

He's assigned to save a girl named Gaby. She's the daughter of a famous physicist. That famous physicist has been forced to work on a nuclear bomb for some Italian mafia. She's basically a crucial key to stopping the creation of another nuclear bomb.

Trying to stop Solo on his rescue mission is Ilya, a Russian spy. He's basically Solo's equivalent. This whole first scene is a grandiose scene that just shows the skills and charm of our three characters.

Gaby and Solo get away but eventually the three have to work together to stop the Italian mafia from making that nuclear bomb. This is all taking place sometime in the 1960s so the cold war is still going strong.

Some people may have forgotten what the cold war was. Basically it was this stalemate potential war between the United States and Russia. The two superpower nations were jockeying position to become the major superpower of the world. We saw this adversarial relationship throughout decades and this was in a lot of movies. This movie harkens back to those days. If you understand the cold war you kind of get a better appreciation of why Solo and Ilya aren't supposed to get along.

That time was also a time of nuclear fear. Well we still fear nuclear disaster but at the time during the cold war this was constantly threatened. Hence the plot of the movie kind of makes sense in a James Bond plot kind of way. This movie kind of has that old school James Bond kind of vibe to it.

Though this movie is also extremely gorgeous. The wardrobe, makeup and locales that they chose for this is crazy. This kind of reminds me of what an AI would dream up for this movie but this was done in real life. It looks so good it almost looks AI artificial. For those of you that are reading this in the 2020's you know what I mean about this.

Action sequences are done quite well. I appreciate the fact that they used a lot of practical effects and the camera isn't too jittery that I don't understand what's going on. There are however some camera angles that are a little too artistic for my taste but that's their artistic decision to make.

I love the relationships between each of the characters. The dynamics is really well done and thought out. Solo is a very methodical character whereas Ilya is the crash into the building kind of character. They still keep their spy dynamics though. They all complement one another very well. Even some of the plot twists are sold quite well.

Overall, I was pleasantly surprised with this one. I thought this was way better than what I was expecting. It's really surprising that not a lot of people know about this movie. This really should get more attention than it is getting. I found it quite entertaining so I'm going to give it a 7.5 out of 10. By the end of the movie it felt like it was an origin story for a franchise but I don't think anything came out of this one.