Let me stipulate right up front that I loved this movie.  I want to see it again and that’s really rare for me.  I went in torn between hope and trepidation.  This was either going to be very good or a total train wreck.  On the one hand you had Guy Ritchie directing.  On the other it was based on the Man From U.N.C.L.E  I loved the show as a little kid.  I was madly in love with Illya Kuryakin.  I even got to go on the set because of my father’s business partners in Los Angeles who had connections to the movie business.  It was the first time I was ever on a set and David McCallum was even more handsome in person then on film.

Years later they started showing the TV show on Nick at Night.  I was so excited.  I settled down to watch this beloved childhood series.  And I was shocked.  Somewhere in the intervening years they had reshot all the episodes and made them shitty.  I stopped watching and resolved to just keep my gauzy memories.

So now there’s a movie and I headed out last night filled with hope and fear.  I say again — I loved it.  The two leads are handsome and charming.  Suggestive lines are uttered by Napoleon Solo, but unlike the ghastly Roger Moore Bond movies they weren’t stupid suggestive ranging into creepy suggestive.  Illya is one deeply psychologically messed up guy which I loved.  The female character, Gaby, is strong and capable and keeps you guessing.  She’s also not Hollywood pretty.  Instead she is interesting.

It was set in 1963 and Ritchie sent a love letter to that era.  It made me think of the glamour of the early Bond movies, or the film GRAND PRIX (a movie about formula 1 car racing that I adore).  There were exotic Italian locals, and race cars, the amazing fashions of Carnaby Street.  It’s action packed and also very funny.

It has Hugh Grant as Mr. Waverly who is going to lead this new team.  And boy are they a bunch of misfits.  Ritchie made an interesting casting choice.  David McCallum is not a big man.  Illya was slight, more like a whippet than a tank though he was the action guy while Napoleon was Mr. Suave.  In this Illya is a bruiser.  Bigger then Solo with real anger management issues.  He’s a handsome blond Hulk.  At first it threw me, but I ended up really liking the change.

It’s interesting that a Brit actor is playing the American Solo and an American is playing the Russian.  The rest of the cast is very cosmopolitan, and they all work with that light, tongue-in-cheek quality that was a hallmark of the TV show.

I’m not going to talk about the plot.  It’s very sixties spy set up.  The plot isn’t the point.  It’s all about the interactions between the characters which was just perfect.  I really, really hope this becomes a viable franchise and we see more of The Man From U.N.C.L.E.