Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Man from U.N.C.L.E.’ on Netflix, a Guy Ritchie Action Flick That’s All Style, Style, Style

Guy Ritchie has made seven films since The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (now on Netflix) was released in 2015. Seven! That’s a straight-up FIRE pace for a modern film director, especially someone with Ritchie’s stylistic acumen. Of course, you could make the argument that none of those films is particularly memorable (only 2023’s The Covenant seemed to have something to say), and you could easily assert that U.N.C.L.E., a reboot of the 1960s TV spy series, was the beginning of a trend in which Ritchie just churned ’em out quantity-over-quality style. U.N.C.L.E. was a box office flop when it released, which means one thing: it’s exactly the kind of headscratcher of a mostly forgettable and rapidly aging movie ripe to wedge itself into the Netflix Top 10, as so often – and inexplicably – happens. Maybe it’s worth a stream, then? On a lazy evening where you don’t mind if you doze off and miss bits of it here and there? Sure. Maybe.

THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E.: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Once upon a time in Berlin is, I believe, exactly how Ritchie would like one to begin describing the plot of this movie. That’s the cool-kid way to do it, you know, the I-know-about-FILMS slightly snobby, gatekeeper kind of way. Anyway, to be specific, it’s East Berlin, 1963. That’s where CIA spy Napoleon Solo (Henry Cavill) gathers up Gaby Teller (Alicia Vikander) because her father is building a nuke for NAH-tzees who would use a nuke for terrible things (instead of all the good things you can use a nuke for, of course). Thing is, Russian KGB spy Illya Kuryakin (a pre-scandal Armie Hammer) also wants Gaby because her father is a NAT-tzee with a nuke. This is the thick of the Cold War, see, and USA and Russia are s’posedta fight over these things, so there’s a chase in which Napoleon tries to get away with Gaby and Illya is such a galoot, he can almost stop their car with his damn bare hands. It gets destructive and loud and folks end up ziplining over the Berlin Wall in order to escape.

All this is very exciting but also for naught, because in this case, USA and Russia actually have the same goal: stopping the NAH-tzee sympathizers from getting that nuke. (But what about the missiles in Cuba? you might ask, to which the movie would reply, What missiles?) And so, in the first of the plot’s 3,664 convoluted-ass twists, Napoleon and Illya have to work together, which is just, you know, total UGH. I mean, it’s like the captain of the football team and the president of the a/v club being forced to co-chair the prom committee or something. So they schlep off to, as the subtitle reads, ROME, ITALY (as opposed to Rome, Alabama, I guess?) so Illya and Gaby can pose as soon-to-be-marrieds while Napoleon stands around being suave, dapper and utterly vacant of personality.

I’m simplifying this plot for the sake of not spoiling it, and also my sanity. The bad guys are the evil husband-wife team, Alexander (Luca Calvani) and Victoria Vinceguerra (Elizabeth Debicki, the tall gold lady in Guardians of the Galaxy), as well as Gaby’s NAH-tzee uncle Rudi (Sylvester Groth), who has quite the electrified torture rig, just wait’ll you see it in action. Jared Harris plays a guy barking orders and Hugh Grant turns up as a Brit honcho, and god love these guys, but the purpose of their roles is lost on me. Illya and Gaby spark some romantic tension that you can cut through with a shrug, and Napoleon continues to exist, barely. There’s a shootout at the end, and then a chase, and then some things blow up. Bet you didn’t see that coming! So few movies end that way!

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: U.N.C.L.E. is guaranteed to evaporate from your mind lickety-split, and it isn’t even Ritchie’s most forgettable movie. That would be King Arthur: Legend of the Sword. Remember King Arthur: Legend of the Sword? Why would you, really? 

Performance Worth Watching: Vikander is the only member of this cast with any screen presence, but it’s wasted on a zero-zilch-nada-nothing of a character. 

Memorable Dialogue: Gaby absolutely NAILS Napoleon’s overwhelming vacuousness: “You look important. Or at least your suit does.”

Sex and Skin: None. Aren’t movies like this supposed to be at least a little bit sexy? It adheres to every element of the cheeky-spy-movie formula except that one.

Our Take: The Man from U.N.C.L.E. is a film of affectations: Goofy accents, slick fashion, nifty vehicles. Retro this, retro that, retro the other. Double crosses, triple crosses, quadruple crosses, quintuple crosses. Double entendres, triple entendres, quadruple entendres, quintuple entendres. Split screens that are split and split and split again until you don’t know what to look at. Plot switchbacks atop plot switchbacks. Voiceovers, voiceunders, voiceinsiders. So, so many edits. Ritchie has this thing all dressed up and going inside outside upside-down, and ending up nowhere.

The movie might be fun if it told a story we cared about, featuring characters we cared about. Those are the two things Ritchie apparently found extraneous. As the leads who are supposed to be carrying the film, Cavill, Hammer and Vikander have no room to work among the jumbled sub-Mission: Impossible plot, and their chemistry suffers. Greatly. Ritchie and co-scripter Lionel Wigram penned the screenplay equivalent of your GPS saying “rerouting…” a few dozen times on a two-hour trip, with the occasional erudite 300-word Yo Mama joke and bits of cynical comedy that might prickle you if it wasn’t so fatally squashed flat. The filmmaker plows forward utterly unburdened by even the slightest hint of substance. It’s admirable, really. This movie makes a trifle look like a T-bone steak.

Our Call: SKIP IT. “Entertain me” is an actual line from this movie. If only!

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.