It’s the year of the Spy movie as 2015 emerges with a plethora of thrillers, and perhaps some comedies, each playing with the spy genre.
We’ve already had Kingsman: Secret Service this year, and we can expect to see James Bond return in Spectre at the end of the year but in between we can expect to see a big screen adaptation of another classic US TV series helmed by British director Guy Ritchie as well as a lower key British big screen adventure for the Spooks team which may well get dwarfed by the fifth instalment in the Mission Impossible franchise.
The trailer for the forthcoming big screen remake of 60s TV series The Man from U.N.C.L.E. has recently appeared on the Youtube revealing a highly stylised period movie with action and a sense of humour.
Rather than modernising the setting, the film has opted to stay in the 1960s and retain the relevance of a Soviet agent, Illya Kuryakin, working alongside Napoleon Solo as part of a global organisation which is nothing to do with the United Nations.
U.N.C.L.E. actually stands for United Network Command for Law and Enforcement. Doctor Who’s 1970s organisation UNIT is now known as the Unified Intelligence Taskforce where once it had specifically been called the United Nations Intelligence Taskforce.
With a convoluted history involving James Bond creator Ian Fleming, who reportedly proposed the name of leading character Napoleon Solo, The Man from U.N.C.L.E. eventually ran for 105 episodes in the mid-to-late 60s and saw Solo partnered with Illya Kuryakin and reporting to the British head of the organisation Alexander Waverly.
The new Man from U.N.C.L.E. film stars “Man of Steel” actor Henry Cavill, himself tipped as a future James Bond, as Solo. He is joined by Armie Hammer who plays Kuryakin, with Hugh Grant as Waverly.
The new film capitalises on the early 60s Cold War setting by teaming up two U.N.C.L.E. agents, Napoleon Solo and Illya Kuryakin on a joint mission to stop a mysterious international criminal organisation from destabilising the fragile balance of power through the proliferation of nuclear weapons.
The pair have to put aside their differences in order to thwart the dastardly plot while trying to avoid falling into well worn period spy movie cliches and tropes.
Their only lead is the daughter of a vanished German scientist, who is the key to infiltrating the criminal organisation and there will be the inevitable race against time to avert a catastrophe.