If Daniel Craig is looking to vacate Bond's expensive shoes any time soon, The Man from U.N.C.L.E. has unveiled an impressive contender for his replacement.
Henry Cavill, best known as the big screen's most recent Superman in Man of Steel, has quite possibly found the role he was made for in the gloriously named Napoleon Solo.
Slick, suave and amusingly unflappable, Solo is the light-fingered US special agent paired with KGB strongman Illya Kuryakin (Armie Hammer) on a mission to find East German mechanic Gaby Teller's (Alicia Vikander) estranged father and stop the launch of a nuclear warhead in 1960s Rome.
Inspired by the 1960s TV series of the same name, The Man from U.N.C.L.E (which stands from United Network Command for Law and Enforcement, but isn’t particularly important despite the film’s title) is a throwback to early Bond films which revel in spy gadgets and tropes and don't take themselves too seriously.
At the same time, it has a socially modern sensibility, with two strong female characters in Gaby (who can more than hold her own behind the wheel) and Victoria (Aussie Elizabeth Debicki), a fierce and intriguing villain.
Napoleon and Ilya also subvert convention by debating the importance of women’s belts and dresses matching with clutches and shoes.
The spies' one-upmanship throughout the film is very entertaining and just one of the things this light-hearted espionage caper gets right.
The whole cast is perfectly assembled, and despite none of the principal leads using their native accents (the Brit plays American, the American plays Russian, the Swede plays German and the Aussie plays a curious Italian-British hybrid) their deliveries are far from grating.
Hugh Grant however does seem out of place as a British intelligence agent, in a role that audiences would more expect to see Michael Caine fill than the generally-mumbling fop.
And try and spot the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo by none other than David Beckham as a projectionist.
But what brings all the vastly different ingredients together is director Guy Ritchie, who utilises all his trademark tricks to smash out a homage to 1960s spies.
No Ritchie film would be complete without revelatory jumps back in time and obligatory split-screens, but The Man from U.N.C.L.E also employs subtitles for the scenes spoken in Italian, Russian and German which become a character in and of themselves: block yellow and sometimes sharing as much of the screen as their subject.
Uproarious fun, The Man from U.N.C.L.E will challenge for 2015’s best spy film.
