The movie is a long-in-the-works riff on the classic television series that ran on NBC from 1964 to 1968 with Robert Vaughn and David McCallum as Solo and Kuryakin, premiere agents in the United Network Command for Law and Enforcement.
The Man from U.N.C.L.E. is an origin story for the duo and U.N.C.L.E. itself, chronicling how their first adventure led directly to the formation of an espionage cooperative between the two sides in the Cold War.
This trailer's concern with story is perfunctory at best. Mostly it's just having a good time, showcasing the light buddy comedy-style tone and the charisma of its two leads.
Maybe it's just his other gig as the Man of Steel, but is anybody else getting a heavy Christopher Reeve vibe from Cavill here? He's projecting an affable, confident squareness that reminds us very much of Reeve and feels more Clark Kent than anything in Cavill's first Superman movie.
Hammer, meanwhile, appears to be having a ball playing Russian. The Lone Ranger dinged him a little, but remember just how sharp this guy was as the Winklevoss Twins in The Social Network; he's got chops.
Cavill and Hammer get backup from Alicia Vikander of Ex Machina, Elizabeth Debicki from The Great Gatsby, Lane Pryce himself Jared Harris, and the one and only Hugh Grant, who plays Waverly, their eventual boss at U.N.C.L.E.
Guy Ritchie, the Snatch helmer who kept his bickering-buddies-in-big-adventures game tight with not one but two Sherlock Holmes blockbusters, directs what Warner Bros. hopes is another franchise. Interestingly, both he and his former producer Matthew Vaughn have comedic action movies playing with old school spy conventions this year, since Vaughn's Kingsman: The Secret Service hits this week.
The Man From U.N.C.L.E. is set to open in theaters on August 14th.
Here's the official synopsis and the first poster:
Set against the backdrop of the early 1960s, at the height of the Cold War, “The Man from U.N.C.L.E.” centers on CIA agent Solo and KGB agent Kuryakin. Forced to put aside longstanding hostilities, the two team up on a joint mission to stop a mysterious international criminal organization, which is bent on destabilizing the fragile balance of power through the proliferation of nuclear weapons and technology. The duo’s only lead is the daughter of a vanished German scientist, who is the key to infiltrating the criminal organization, and they must race against time to find him and prevent a worldwide catastrophe.
