Alicia Vikander, Armie Hammer and Henry Cavill (Daniel Smith/Warner Bros. Pictures)

We live in a time when much of our televised cultural history is readily available through your cable box.

Take for instance a regular Sunday evening program of ‘60s spy shows The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and Mission: Impossible. The clean mid-century modern design, snappy dialogue, and convoluted plot lines (more than one of which involves convincing a criminal that they’ve been asleep for years) would seem to be easily translatable to the big screen for a relatively small budget. Or not.

The Mission Impossible franchise has taken the television template to a big-budget extreme for a critically and commercially successful modern equivalent. Now director Guy Ritchie (Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels) takes on The Man from U.N.C.L.E. in an adaptation of Cold War entertainment set in the early ‘60s. It’s a period piece with none of the simple visual elegance of its source and casting that has little to do with the original stars’ charisma and chemistry.

At least the soundtrack’s good.

The movie begins with a meeting cute between the leads. Napoleon Solo (Henry Cavill) is sent to East Berlin to help spunky auto mechanic Gaby (Alicia Vikander ), the daughter of a missing German scientist, leave the country. But they have to get past Ilya Kuryakin (Armie Hammer), a KGB agent of apparently superhuman strength who nearly foils Solo’s plan.

If you’re familiar with the original show, this already sets off alarms. On TV, Solo and Kuryakin are friends from opposite sides of the Iron Curtain working together. The movie is a potentially franchise-launching prequel that establishes their friendship and teamwork. Except it doesn’t.

I like Armie Hammer, but what is a big guy like him doing playing a role originated by tiny David McCallum? The almost fey McCallum has a prominent brow and pout that suggests an intelligent spy with an inner life as opposed to Hammer’s brute force jock. Cavill is no better as Napoleon Solo, his features no match for the cartoonish square jaw of Robert Vaughan. Sure, it’s 50 years later and an entirely different talent pool, but this reinvention of a classic series isn’t particularly inventive.

International intrigue shouldn’t be this boring. If the cast ignites no sparks, it’s not entirely their fault. Hammer was two of the highlights of The Social Network as the menacing Winklevoss twins, and Cavill was a sympathetic superhero in the widely panned Man of Steel. Neither seems to be playing to their strengths in a script that plods from set piece to set piece in a jet-setting game of cat and mouse that suits naptime more than movie time.

The only thing that keeps you on your toes is a jet-setting soundtrack that features artists I never would have expected to hear in a major Hollywood picture. Like Italian singer Rita Pavone, singing the German pop song “Wenn Ich Ein Junge Wär (If I was a Boy).” Or the spiky guitar line of Tropicalia songwriter Tom Zé’s “Jimmy Renda Se.” Sure, that one’s from 1970, but I’m willing to forgive the anachronism for the chance to hear Zé on the big screen. The soundtrack makes good use of classic R&B from Roberta Flack and Solomon Burke, but the movie doesn’t justify such a good mix tape.

I can’t speak to their accuracy, but fashionistas may be awakened by the film’s striking costumes. But The Man From U.N.C.L.E. doesn’t have much of a movie to hang its music and fashions on.

—

The Man from U.N.C.L.E.
Directed by Guy Ritchie
Written by Guy Ritchie and Lionel Wigram
With Henry Cavill, Armie Hammer Alicia Vikander
Running time 116 minutes
Rated PG-13 for action violence, some suggestive content, and partial nudity
Opens today at a multiplex near you.