Director: Guy Ritchie
Genre: Action
Starring: Henry Cavill, Armie Hammer, Alicia Vikander, Hugh Grant
Distributed by: Warner Bros. Pictures
Release Date: August 14, 2015
My Rating: 6/10
I am a fan of spy films and action-packed films in general, that much is definitely true. Some espionage thrillers keep you constantly vigilant for clues, both glaring and subtle, for Chekhov's guns that will contribute to escalating plot twists and turns. Many of these conventional twists have, admittedly, been exhausted to the point where stereotypes have become affixed to the true, 'unexpected' villain's identity: the perpetually mocked-and-abused nerdy and/or quiet right-hand-man, the beautiful and charmingly cute woman who turns out to be a seductress, you name it.
Director Guy Ritchie's new spy film, based on the 1960s TV show of the same name, pits CIA Agent Napoleon Solo (Cavill, Man of Steel) against Soviet KGB operative Ilya Kuryakin (Hammer, The Social Network, The Lone Ranger) after Solo travels to East Berlin in 1963, at the height of the Cold War, to extract Gaby Teller (Vikander, Ex Machina), the daughter of a notorious purported Nazi scientist-turned CIA informant after the end of World War II. However, Solo and Kuryakin are quickly forced by their respective employers to collaborate in order to defeat a common, much greater threat: an Italian shipping company owned by a couple named Alexander and Victoria Vinciguerra (a woman who appears to attempt at reincarnating a young Sophia Loren or something), who has enlisted Gaby's Uncle Rudi in order to develop a nuclear weapon.
The script is rife with awkwardly funny lines and gaffes, (many surrounding the tense relationship between the two agents, and which in no way steer clear from stereotypes depicting Soviet-era Russians as uptight at best and ruthless at worst) just enough for this film to be considered a comedy, perhaps the same way both Avengers filmed proved to be funny. The latter, however, appeared to accomplish this more seamlessly. Perhaps the characters in this franchise seemed more likable to me.
The fight scenes and car-chase sequences that comprised the action were certainly entertaining, and accompanied by a superb score. However, the cliches undoubtedly abounded: the villain's last name means 'war-victor' in Italian, for crying out loud. As for the performances: Mr. Cavill's acting seems overly forced and cartoonish, Mr. Hammer is brilliant as the aforementioned stiff Kuryakin, with his I-don't-take-crap-from-anybody mentality, and Miss Vikander is simply adorable.
I was not expecting to see a spy comedy, but if that is indeed what I signed up for last Sunday, then I would have wished to see something more akin to Get Smart (2008), a film also based on a 1960s TV show exploring, among other themes, the Manichean dynamic of the US-Soviet relationship during the Cold War. This film actually made me laugh hysterically.
