THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E **

More post-modern twaddle but a fun movie nevertheless, Guy Ritchie;s THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E. is his big screen treatment of a now almost forgotten long-running tv series. If the original small screen version tended to take itself a mite too seriously this is an out-and-out pastiche, made very much in Ritchie's trademark slam-bang style. Stepping into the shoes of Robert Vaughan's Napoleon Solo and David McCallum's Ilya Kuryakin are Henry Cavill and Armie Hammer. If Cavill tries too hard to mirror Vaughan's clipped vocal delivery, Hammer is excellent as Kuryakin, creating his character as if from scratch which, of course, is the point as this is really a prequel to the television version. Indeed, the more I see of Hammer the more I like him. Alicia Vikander, too, is very nicely cast as the German girl roped into the bizarre, slightly confusing and really rather inconsequential plot. Is it a good movie? Of course not but it does pass a couple of hours very pleasantly indeed.