The Man from U.N.C.L.E.
It's so hard to find well-made, well-done froth, and this was that.
The Cold War is cute now, did you know this?
I went along with the premise of the movie which is nostalgia for the KGB and possiby the Stasi. I was surprised by the The Cold War Was Very Cute approach and then I realized that the filmmaker was British. I don't know that Americans would make a "KGB agents had their own difficulties" approach. The film comes from a world view that misses the KGB, and the Cold War, when it was government agencies and identifiable armies and navys fighitng over information hidden in compounds.
About halfway into the movie, I totally bought into the nostalgia because a suicide bomber killed 80 people in Afghanistan and Nice Bastille Day Truck Massacre and Munich shooting and the other German train stabbingand... Yeah. Apparently those people trapped behind the Iron Curtain didn't know how good we had it back then, apparently. I didn't mind that there is not a SINGLE not-white person in this entire movie. Even though this film entirely erases the existence of me and mine, I still loved it. I think it's partly because when these types of filmmakers try to represent yellow people, it comes out so terrible. I'd rather see an all white story if white people are going to make it.
The plot (well, what stands for the plot in this movie) goes like this: the CIA, the KGB, and possibly the Stasi (this part wasn't clear to me) have to cooperate to defeat the nuclear ambitions of a pair of Nazis hiding out in Italy (not Brazil). The only truly bad people in this film are the Nazis, in fact. Everyone else is just doing their job, have families, have inner dialogue and backstories.
And even the main villain Nazi is a bit cartoony - he speaks hoch Deutsch and is an aristocrat to all appearances and never actually mentions Hitler or the Deutsche Volk or even particularly any sort of hatred for Jews or homosexuals or any other actual political orientation. He's just this apolitical serial killer who happened to find his wings during the genocidal Third Reich regime and is just happy for the opportunity to exercise his sadism on others. And he's disposed of like a cartoon, for laughs.
And he has a German speaking Swedish actress niece who is clearly not a Nazi, so the film was even unoffensive about that - it's that PARTICULAR GERMAN who's a Nazi, not any of the other German characters.
I think they picked Italy so they could do shots like this:
I mostly spent the time gawking at the pretty clothes and pretty Italy and pretty people, and feeling snobby that I speak enough German to not have to read all of the subtitles for the German speaking scenes and to recognize that the Swedish actress can't quite hack German. I got a kick out of the fact that the lead girl was quite short, and not leggy at all. SHORT GIRL POWER.
Also, both Henry Cavill and Armie (??) Hammer are ridiculously good looking people. They both look manufactured from the Good Looking Movie Star factory that stopped operating circa 1950. They remind me of old school movie stars, in the Rock Hudson mold or Montgomery Clift in his prime way. You believe them in the story because you're suspending disbelief, but in the back of your mind you are fully aware that someone with that kind of face can only be a movie star and nothing else. Hammer is clearly some sort of actual giant, and Cavill is so pretty in the face. With the straight black eyebrows cutting across a noble pale brow in a super melodramatic way, and THAT CHIN, he reminds me a bit of Timothy Dalton during the Jane Eyre brouhaha, but more less cranky, more self aware, and like I said, Monty Clift but more prosperous, less tortured. In a word OMG THE FACE. Cavill was much livelier as Solo than he was as Superman.
LOOK AT THEM.
And further - an unexpected blast from the past, Hugh Grant!!! He has kept himself in good shape, actually, and though he isn't quite as cartoonishly, comic-book handsome as the younger two men, Grant actually doesn't get pushed into the wall paper in the way that you might expect, given that he is old. He's still got it, the old fart.
Hugh Grant is Mi6 or 5 or whatever in this movie, and it turns out England is the one that is really controlling the baby upstart agencies of the KGB and the CIA, which was also very entertaining a world view to encounter in this post-Brexit era.