The Man from U.N.C.L.E.

How is it that James Bond doesn’t have like 85 illegitimate kids running around? Pierce Brosnan himself has even gone on record as saying that Bond never uses condoms simply because he doesn’t have the time to put them on; he might get his head blown off (no pun intended) at any given moment, so he needs to be as efficient as humanely possible. Heck even the secretly gay cop in True Detective was able to plant a seed in that little Spanish hottie of his and she was nowhere near as hot as the groupies 007 gets. Everyone knows that the hotter the girl the stronger the uh…release you’re going to induce from a guy. So Bond should be up to his neck in paternity suits. I don’t know, maybe what’s considered to be a 10 to me is simply thought of as slumming it to Bond.

The point is, I could never be a secret agent; I’d wind up being the Eazy-E or Magic Johnson of the spy world. And this is exactly why I told this unbelievably cute girl I met the other day that she could never live out her dream of being an undercover operative, I don’t think she’d be prepared to handle all of the duties that comes with it. Or at least I’d hope she wouldn’t be prepared for that, then she’d be the Courtney Love of the spy world. I kid, I kid but not really.

So naturally as I went to go see The Man from U.N.C.L.E., I was pleased with the fact that the American spy in the movie (Solo) kept with the tradition of banging every woman that crossed his path. The problem though is that Henry Cavill tried to emulate everyone’s favorite modern day spy in Archer with his portrayal of the suave Solo. Now don’t get me wrong, Archer is cool but Archer’s cheesiness works because he’s a cartoon. Trying to bring that to real life is only possible if you’re Sean Connery and the last time I checked, only Connery could get away with slapping a random woman on the ass as he told her to bring him a drink (Goldfinger). So suffice it say that Cavill’s attempt at a very public audition to be the next Bond with his performance in this movie failed miserably.

Overall he really wasn’t all that bad, it’s just that it takes you nearly a third of the movie to get over his approach. But once you do, U.N.C.L.E. turns out to be a fairly entertaining film. Director Guy Ritchie (Sherlock Holmes) brings his over stylized approach to this movie and thankfully it actually aids in helping separate it from the usual spy flicks that you’ve seen in the past 20 years. His quirky soundtrack and his filming of the action scenes (which makes them look like they are straight out of a comic book) takes you back to the days when you were a kid and everyone wanted to be a spy. You couldn’t wait to wear tailored suits, play with cool gadgets, and be able to drink hard liquor in the middle of the day without anyone giving you a hard time.

And it also helps that this movie has an inexplicably evil criminal organization in it that wants to create an atom bomb to sell to the highest bidder. So Solo is forced to work with his Russian counterpart, the temperamental Illya, to try and bring down this organization before they have the keys to ruling the world. And as they do you are taken to an array of exotic locales that are full beautiful women, cool cars, and unforgettable landscapes.

I hate to say it but Ritchie was somehow able to pull this movie off. I give it a rating of barely FRESH!