'60s Spies Hit The Big Screen, With Guy Ritchie Flair

Transcript

SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

Guy Ritchie, the film director who's made Sherlock Holmes into an action hero, has brought a couple of other characters from the past into new lives on screen.

(SOUNDBITE OF JERRY GOLDSMITH SONG, "MAIN TITLE")

SIMON: Napoleon Solo, Illya Kuryakin - Cold warriors from "The Man From U.N.C.L.E." TV series of the 1960s. It's still rerunning somewhere. The film stars Henry Cavill, Armie Hammer, Alicia Vikander and Elizabeth Debicki - and, if you wait long enough, Hugh Grant. Guy Ritchie joins us from New York.

Thanks so much for being with us.

GUY RITCHIE: Thank you.

SIMON: We have a clip we'd like to run. Napoleon Solo has brought a gifted and - may I note - sensationally attractive East German auto mechanic across the Berlin Wall but not without a lot of things blowing up in the middle of the night.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E.")

HENRY CAVILL: (As Solo) You told me this was going to be a simple extraction.

JARED HARRIS: (As Sanders) It should have been. I didn't ask you to light up half of East Berlin.

CAVILL: (As Solo) They were waiting for me.

HARRIS: (As Sanders) Don't flatter yourself. They follow everybody.

CAVILL: (As Solo) What was waiting for me was barely human. You should have seen it run.

HARRIS: (As Sanders) Grow a spine, Solo.

SIMON: That's, of course, a couple of British actors - Jared Harris as director of the CIA and Henry Cavill as the dapper American Napoleon Solo.

So, Mr. Ritchie, is Henry Cavill, who already plays an American icon as Superman, playing a kind of British ideal of an American spy?

RITCHIE: Well, one of the dangers I find with this genre is that spies can be predictably dull in their origin in the fact that they're probably civil servants who have gone through the system. What we wanted to do was to give a certain sex appeal to the origin story of Napoleon Solo. So he was - is an American that was caught up in the Second World War and stayed on after and then developed an understanding of the black market trade for fine arts.

And during this period, he learned several languages and refined himself in a European way. So he sort of has the muscularity of the American with the sophistication of a European. And eventually, the CIA caught up with him. They sent out a whole task force just to get him. And then they didn't want to waste his skills, once they realized they had this skill set. No civil servant had the equivalent of this skill set. So it was either prison or it was working for the CIA. And I like that as a sort of origin story.

SIMON: And Illya Kuryakin, by contrast, was from what we now might call a dissident family in Russia.

RITCHIE: Yeah. What I didn't want is to have characters without some form of complication. Illya Kuryakin came up through the ranks in a very Russian way. I mean, we all grew up with Russian athletes being rather especially uber, and I wanted to capture some of that for Kuryakin. But at the same, with his uberness, he's held back by a terrible temper, which he finds very difficult to control. So the union of these two hopefully would create an exciting idea for who your spies would be.

SIMON: You know, I've read a few reviews, and some of them are quite blunt. They find the stirrings of an attraction between Solo and Kuryakin. Did you put that in the film, or is it in the minds of reviewers?

RITCHIE: The stirrings of attraction, what does that mean?

SIMON: I have read the phrase homoerotic. That was in the Variety review.

RITCHIE: (Laughter) Yes, I don't know what - I don't know what to say.

SIMON: And no problem with that. I think we're all happy to see a film like that. But I'm wondering is that in the reviewer's mind, or is it in your film?

RITCHIE: I think that's more in the reviewer's mind. The intention was that these two like one another in spite of the fact they don't want to like one another. How that managed to turn into homoerotic, yes, I don't quite know how you make that leap. You know, I am interested in the relationship between men. And I'm not - at a facile level, I find them too predictable on film. So there needed to be something between these two that you thought, you know, I like those two, and they like one another. But I can't see them fancying one another.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E.")

ARMIE HAMMER: (As Illya) Soviet architect traveling to Rome would never dress his woman in the clothes you tried to put her in. You tried to dress her like someone on your side thinks someone dress behind the Iron Curtain.

CAVILL: (As Solo) She's from behind the Iron Curtain.

HAMMER: (As Illya) That doesn't mean she want to bring it with her.

We need two purses, please, and everyday clutch and grated belt. I - no. No, not a Dior, the Rabanne.

CAVILL: (As Solo) You can't put a Paco Rabanne belt on a bateau (ph).

HAMMER: (As Illya) She's not going to wear a bateau (ph).

CAVILL: (As Solo) What's wrong with a bateau?

HAMMER: (As Illya) Nothing - if you're fat. The Dior goes with the Rabanne.

SIMON: I don't want to give away anything, but let me just say, you know, after the Americans going back and forth, the British have to come in and save the day.

RITCHIE: I don't think it's quite as clear as all that, you know? There's - that's really the idea of the piece is the piece is a reconciliation between...

SIMON: I'd say when the Royal Navy brings in an aircraft carrier, the British save the day (laughter).

RITCHIE: Well, no, but it's the - they have to rely upon the two agents, right?

SIMON: Yes, of course.

RITCHIE: So they have to rely upon the Russian agent, and they have to rely upon the American agent. And those are the two guys that save the day. But we were trying to capture a period in the sense that -the significant elements of that period, which was to have the reconciliation between the Russians and the Americans and the Brits. It was - that's really what was taking place after the Second World War and during the Cold War, is that everyone sort of had to work together. And I rather like that as an idea. So we had to bring the Brits in. We weren't particularly either gender-specific or nationally specific about who was going to steal the trophy.

SIMON: The last line of the film - again, without giving anything away - seems to be an invitation to a big, fat sequel.

RITCHIE: We enjoyed making this so much. We'd obviously like to go back and do another one. But I'm afraid that's in the hands of the audience. So we'll have to wait and see.

SIMON: Guy Ritchie speaking from New York. His film "The Man From U.N.C.L.E." is out now.

Mr. Ritchie, thanks so much for being with us.

RITCHIE: Thank you very much, indeed. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.