Excellent, a Must See

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

*Spoiler/plot- The Return of the Man from UNCLE: The Fifteen Years Later Affair, 1983. A nuclear warhead is stolen by an international crime ring and UNCLE calls back some of it's older retired spy's to help out with this case. Also the THRUSH spy ring wants revenge on the older spy's and tries to kill them in the ransom exchange.*Special Stars- David McCallum, Robert Vaughn, Patrick Mcnee, Anthony Zerbe, Keenan Wynn.*Theme- Old spy's are the best spy's.*Trivia/location/goofs- Las Vegas and Hoover dam locations. Shot in Las Vegas, Boulder dam. Cameo of 'James Bond' with George Lazenby.*Emotion- A reunion show idea that doesn't quite excite the fan as the original series. Too many plot points hitting the 'older' spy premise to be enjoyable. There are too many supporting characters of famous actors that have very little to do to tell the story. Another disappointing aspect is that other than vintage pen communicators (not the first communicator- which was a cigarette box) and very little signature weaponry like the UNCLE agents guns or THRUSH insignia were seen in film. This is shell of a reunion film with no spirit or charm even though the film has the original actors.*Based On- 60's TV spy show, 'Man from UNCLE'.

Talk of a 'Man From U.N.C.L.E.' movie has recently resurfaced, this time with Stephen Soderburgh's name attached. Not being a fan of his work, I cannot say I'm too thrilled, but let's wait and see.In 1983, writer/producer Michael Sloan ( future creator of 'The Equalizer' ) reunited Robert Vaughn and David McCallum for this entertaining television movie. THRUSH has stolen a nuclear device, and threatens to use it unless a hefty ransom is paid. Furthermore, it must be delivered in person by none other than Napoleon Solo, now a computer salesman. Solo agrees to return, provided Illya Kuryakin follow suit. If you can believe this, the ex-Russian agent now works as a fashion designer! The chief villain, Justin Sepheran ( Anthony Zerbe ), is an old enemy of Solo's and wants revenge...'Return' is generally disliked by U.N.C.L.E. fans for several reasons, one of which was keeping Solo and Kuryakin apart much of the time, greatly reducing the potential for interaction. A lot of episodes were like that too as I recall. The main plot is a retread of the Bond picture 'Thunderball', but money was clearly spent on the movie ( there's location filming in Las Vegas and a 007-style gun battle climax at a dam in Libya ) and the supporting cast is good. Keenan Wynn and Geoffrey Lewis are among the villains. British actors Simon Williams ( from 'Upstairs, Downstairs' ) and Carolyn Seymour are also in evidence. Leo G.Carroll having passed away, who better for the job of U.N.C.L.E.'s new boss than good old Patrick Macnee from 'The Avengers', in the role of 'Sir John Raleigh' ( there's a wonderful fan fiction story online - 'The Avengers Affair' - in which it is revealed that Raleigh is really John Steed! ). Gayle Hunnicutt ( once tipped to play 'Major Anya Amasova' in 'The Spy Who Loved Me' ) is absolutely awful though as defecting Russian ballerina 'Andrea'! Of the leads, McCallum seems to have weathered the passing of time better than his co-star, but they are still able to recapture the old magic. The film's tone is rather less campy than the series, and that was to be expected. As McCallum said in an interview at the time, there's no way you can be treat terrorist groups in a light-hearted fashion in these troubled times. There is humour though. When Solo's pen communicator suddenly bleeps in a casino, he says: "Excuse me, my pacemaker needs a new battery!".Director Ray Austin is better known for his work on 'The Avengers'. Overall this is good fun, vastly superior to 'I Spy Returns', 'Wild Wild West Revisited', and the 'Six Million Dollar Man'/'Bionic Woman' reunion films. But the cherry on the cake is George Lazenby's cameo as ( wait for it ) 'J.B.'. We first see him at the wheel of his Aston Martin waiting for traffic lights to change, when he witnesses Solo's car chased by K.G.B. thugs. He decides to give his colleague a helping hand, and deploys the car's gadgets to wipe out the opposition! For those of us who loved 'On Her Majesty's Secret Service' ( 1969 ) and wanted to see George back as James Bond, this scene is an absolute joy. Incidentally, Sean Connery and Roger Moore were both filming Bonds - 'Never Say Never Again' and 'Octopussy' - when this was made!Despite the respectable ratings, there were no more movies of this kind. It remains to be seen whether or not 'M.F.U.' can work in the 21st century. I hope Soderburgh ( or whoever directs it ) does not make the mistake of treating it like a big joke, as sadly happened with 'I Spy' and 'Starsky & Hutch'.

Those super-agents of the spy-era "Man from U.N.C.L.E." Robert Vaughn & David McCallum reteam in this 1983 sequel, reprising their characters admirably & accurately, but the overall tone of this (one of the earliest of the TV "reunion" movies) falls flat. The scripting and helming fail to match the jaunty tongue-in-cheekness of the original, despite screenplay credit by series-creator Sam Rolfe, and regrettably it lacks any hint of the original hep score by Fried & Goldsmith.The plot is predictable and typical of the '60s series: U.N.C.L.E.-vs-THRUSH, with an innocent bystander conscripted into the fray. But beyond the two leads, nothing remains of the original U.N.C.L.E. mythos. By 1983 the MGM backlot had been bulldozed for a condo development, so this was shot entirely on location -- even the interiors. The result feels a little too raw to recreate the fantastical "U.N.C.L.E." franchise. And sadly, the production design ditched the sleek steel-panel walls of the original headquarters, the cute miniskirted G3s and the gee-whiz technology that made the show such fun. It would seem the old HQ "somewhere in the east '40s" was boarded up some years back (perhaps a downsizing?) and operations moved to new offices that smack of a modest corporation somewhere in Wisconsin, with cheap wood panelling and fluorescent overheads and the full "United Network Command for Law and Enforcement" emblazoned billboard-size on the hallway walls; apparently U.N.C.L.E. has moved heavily into branding these days). In fact, the only recognizable elements reprised from the series are the pen-radio, the briefing-room TV sequence and a few blinking "old-world" computer consoles which must have been languishing in the prop warehouse since the Nixon Administration. The shtick of this remake is that the current staff of U.N.C.L.E. comprises vanilla-bland PC yuppies fresh out of prep school, to a man possessing none of the silky suaveness of Napoleon Solo, and the entire agency seems to have a bureaucratic malaise hanging over it. Perhaps with good reason: the international terrorist agency, THRUSH, is said to have been disbanded some years ago. My feeling watching this setup was that with Waverly gone, and without a worthy adversary, U.N.C.L.E. had lost its way.But suddenly, unexpectedly, THRUSH rears up Phoenix-like, precipitating Solo's return to the fold...where he finds himself very much a fish out of water (a riff used, perhaps more effectively, some years later by Pierce Brosnan in "The World Is Not Enough" in which JB's predatory sexual mores clash with the PC feminism of the late 20th century).Patrick McNee ("John Steed" of the Avengers) has been drafted to replace the late Leo G. Carroll in a clever bit of cross-casting, and there's a cameo by an even earlier "Bond," but otherwise the show is unremarkable. Our aging heroes, drawn out of civilian retirement (explained for Ilya, but not for Solo), start out making a few slips what with being so long out of practice, but they're still in reasonable shape and eventually find their old groove. Both see lots of action, toss off many witty comments & wind up regaining to a comfortable camaraderie. Curiously, it's never explained what kept them out of touch through the years (had there a falling out, maybe over a woman?), nor is it ever made clear why top-agent Solo didn't get promoted to an admin position within U.N.C.L.E. (perhaps even to succeed Waverly?), and what events led to the ultimate demise of THRUSH years back. Technically, the show is low-budget with a heavy '70s kitsch (film stock quality is marginal, typical of the era, with lots of stock footage -- one clip through an airplane window shows unprocessed blue-screen!). The audio is poorly dubbed in places, with lots of distracting background noise. The stuntwork is pedestrian: a few cars get rolled "A-Team" style, dazed henchman stumbling from the wrecks; a villain dangles precariously from a helicopter skid, but only a few inches from the ground; an U.N.C.L.E. swat team rappels down Boulder Dam, a supered title identifying it as "Somewhere In Syria." This was a made-for-TV movie and everywhere it definitely shows up as made on the cheap.Come to think of it, though, that was the perverse charm of the '60s series, a four-year romp through cheeseboard sets and cheap pyrotechnics. This sequel may ring more true to the series than I originally gave it credit.

Reunion TV-movies based on old series rarely capture the spirit of the original, but Return of the Man from Uncle taps into the campiness of the series as if it never was off the air. The leads have fun acknowledging their age, and the whole thing neatly turns into a parody of spy films without becoming a parody of itself. I rated it a "9" not because it is great art but because compared to all other TV reunion movies it is head and shoulders above the rest!