David Robbins © 2015
            The trend of remaking TV hits of yesteryear continues apace. Not that anyone expected it to stop. Imitation, after all, is the lifeblood of Hollywood and other movie factories,
            No wonder, then, that we’ve already seen remakes of I SPY, THE AVENGERS, and THE WILD, WILD WEST, to name just several of many. All three stemmed from the ‘spy craze’ of the mid-to-late 1960’s, spawned in large part by the spectacular success of the James Bond franchise.
            None other than famed director Guy Ritchie---a Brit---decided to helm the redo of THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E., an American show that ran from 1964 to 1968. You might be familiar with him from the two Sherlock Holmes movies he’s done with Robert Downing, Jr., or maybe SNATCH or LOCK, STOCK AND TWO SMOKING BARRELS. Again, to mention but a few.
            The new U.N.C.L.E. has been greeted by some critics with the same lack of enthusiasm they showed for the remakes mentioned above. One even called the original U.N.C.L.E. irrelevant, a harsh condemnation that entirely misses a salient aspect. Namely, that at the height of the Cold War, THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E. showed an American and a Russian, nominal adversaries from opposite political spectrums, working together to make the world a better place. You didn’t get more relevant than that. Many people, taking a look at the state of the world today, wish there was more of that ‘relevancy’.

[The complete TV series is available on DVD, along with some cool extras.]             The TV show in its first season became a huge hit. Robert Vaughn and particularly David McCallum were touted as sex symbols, and mobbed at appearances. The show might have gone on for years if its makers hadn’t decided to do everything in their power to ruin the proverbial good thing by turning it into a farce. How so? you ask. Imagine if, at the height of James Bond’s early popularity, they made GOLDFINGER a comedy. That's pretty much what they did to THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E. It lost viewers in droves and by the end of the third season had dropped to near the bottom of the ratings. They tried to salvage things by getting back to ‘serious’ in the fourth season but it was way too late.
  [Imagine if they had this guy dance the Watusi with a man in a gorilla suit. That's what they did to poor Napoleon Solo.] 
            So how does the new movie compare to the TV show? Ritchie displays considerable respect for the original but deviates widely in important details. For instance, in the TV show, U.N.C.L.E. stood for the United Network Command for Law and Enforcement. It was a worldwide organization made up of people of all nationalities. In the new movie, U.N.C.L.E. hasn’t been formed yet, and is only mentioned at the very end.             Another strange deviation is what they’ve done with Napoleon Solo, the American agent. In the original, he was their crack enforcement agent. In the remake, they’ve made him a thief forced to work for the government. But hold the phone right there. That’s not THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E. That’s IT TAKES A THIEF, another TV show from the late ‘60’s in which cat burglar extraordinaire Alexander Mundy was yanked out of prison and made to steal for Uncle Sam or be sent back to the slammer.
            The Russian agent, Illya Kuryakin, also suffers in translation. In the TV show, Illya was much more intellectual than Napoleon. He was also more acrobatic, and in the fight scenes, his moves were nearly always more spectacular, things like springing into a handstand and catching an enemy in a leg lock, or spinning and flipping from a high bar.
            In the new movie, Illya is pretty much a one-trick pony, that trick being his temper. It’s resorted to again and again for chuckles and grins. Don’t get me wrong. Ritchie does it well. It’s just that they might have made Illya more three-dimensional, as it were.  [Napoleon and Illya and their famous U.N.C.L.E. guns.  A variation has a cameo in the movie.] 
            To sum up, if you’re a fan of the TV series, don’t expect the new movie to replicate the elements you loved. It’s a fun flick, though, with more than a few laughs and some nice action.
            I should note that I was a huge fan of the TV show. And yes, I like the new movie. Unfortunately, Ritchie did something that diluted my enjoyment, something that has nothing to do with U.N.C.L.E., per se.
            I don’t know about you, but when I watch a movie, I like to be sucked into the story, to be so caught up that for a while I forget about the real world with its attendant inanities and just have fun. And nothing spoils that feeling worse than having a director resort to the artsy-fartsy technique of a split-screen. When you’re cruising along, totally involved in a movie, a split-screen is like a slap to the face. Suddenly you’re aware that you’re sitting in a seat in a theater. It’s a glaring reminder that it’s a movie, after all. And Ritchie does that twice.
            But don't let my quirk sway you. See it anyway. Henry Cavill is impeccably dashing as Solo, Armie Hammer makes up for his disastrous turn as THE LONE RANGER, and the exotic locales are to die for.