From the first encounter they have on the street, the car-to-car gunfight, to the big boat action at the end, this looks like a blast.
I am really happy to see Henry Cavill and Armie Hammer here. Warner Bros. has a fair amount invested in Cavill at this point, and while I may not hold the most popular position on “Man Of Steel,” I think Cavill in general was well-received. I like the voice it sounds like he's doing here, and I think Armie Hammer's Russian growl is very funny at first listen.
While I didn't care for “The Lone Ranger,” I thought Hammer was totally game, and that's what these big movies require. You can't halfway commit to them. You have to give yourself over completely. For those unfamiliar with the original “Man From UNCLE” series, it was a TV hit in the wake of the James Bond films, and it played with a lot of the same sorts of plots and gadgets, just on a TV budget, with the hook being that an American and a Russian agent were teamed together, something that must have felt at least a little edgy during the Cold War.
A lot of this will come down to chemistry, and this is where I think Ritchie has an edge. He's really good at ensemble films, and a lot of that depends on how good you are at casting, mixing and matching people until everything seems to fit. I didn't love Alicia Vikander in “Seventh Son,” but I'm very excited to see “Ex-Machina.” I like some of the supporting cast we get a glimpse of in this one as well, and it looks to me like the tongue is firmly in cheek for this.
“The Man From UNCLE” is in theaters on August 14, 2015.