Quentin Tarantino Had A Harsh Review For This Beloved Henry Cavill Flop
Few movies languish in Hollywood studio development hell for as long as "The Man From U.N.C.L.E." did. Based on the 1960s NBC spy series starring Robert Vaughn as Napoleon Solo and David McCallum as Illya Kuryakin, two intrepid agents working for the United Network Command for Law and Enforcement, the big-screen project got a boost when Quentin Tarantino considered taking the major studio plunge after the massive success of "Pulp Fiction." The filmmaker ultimately realized he didn't need to go the indie-to-studio route, and instead made "Jackie Brown" (still his finest movie).
Nevertheless, "The Man From U.N.C.L.E." continued to attract attention from some of the biggest names in Hollywood. Steven Soderbergh was attached at one point, and George Clooney mulled an offer to play Solo. Soderbergh dropped out when his vision for a 1960s period take on the material proved too expensive for Warner Bros. Ultimately, after nearly every A-lister in Hollywood passed on the production, Guy Ritchie stepped up and got cameras rolling on a swinging, sexy, exciting picture starring Henry Cavill, Armie Hammer, and Alicia Vikander. The film received mostly good reviews, but fell far short of commercial expectations (grossing $110 million worldwide against an $84 million budget). It also did not pass muster with the man who refused to direct "U.N.C.L.E." Why did Quentin Tarantino dislike Ritchie's "The Man From U.N.C.L.E."?
Tarantino thought Ritchie's The Man From U.N.C.L.E. fell apart in the second half
Speaking to novelist Bret Easton Ellis for T Magazine in 2015, Tarantino dissed a broad assortment of movies (e.g. "A Clockwork Orange," "Vertigo," and "Selma"), eliciting fist pumps and howls of outrage from one sentence to the next. "The Man from U.N.C.L.E." had just been released in theaters at this point, and had yet to acquire its enthusiastic cult following. So Tarantino wasn't offending too many people (save for maybe Ritchie and Vikander) when he laid into the movie.
Tarantino opens with some praise before registering his displeasure with the plot. "The first half was really funny and terrific," he told Ellis, "But in the whole second half I'm like, 'Oh, wait a minute, we were supposed to care about the bomb? What the f*** is going on here? I was supposed to pay attention to the stupid story?'" As for the performances, he said, "Henry Cavill was fantastic, but I didn't like the girl at all," he said.
Vikander gives my favorite performance in the movie (I particularly love the scene where she gets into a playful hotel room brawl with Hammer); if I had my druthers, she would've won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for this in 2015 instead of Tom Hooper's dreadful "The Danish Girl."
I was never convinced that a "Man From U.N.C.L.E." movie needed to exist, but I can't imagine a more pleasurably stylish lark than the one Ritchie constructed.