Quentin Tarantino Left Baffled by Guy Ritchie's Spy Film
Quentin Tarantino praised the start of a blockbuster but was left bewildered by its tangled plot. He criticised Guy Ritchie's The Man from UNCLE for losing its way, admitting he couldn't follow the story's second half.
It’s one thing to be drawn in by a film’s promising opening, but quite another when the narrative unravels as it goes on. Quentin Tarantino, never one to shy away from a strong opinion, found himself completely adrift halfway through a high-profile action flick he’d once considered tackling himself. While his own works are known for their memorable finales—think the tense climax of Reservoir Dogs or the wild, bloody endings of Inglourious Basterds and Django Unchained—he’s noticed that many big studio productions, especially those in the superhero genre, seem to lose their way in a haze of effects and spectacle. For Tarantino, this particular film was a prime example.
From Promising Start to Puzzling Plot
Guy Ritchie’s adaptation of The Man from UNCLE, despite its stylish opening and initial promise, left Tarantino scratching his head. The film, which failed to make much of a splash at the box office and never spawned the sequel it clearly set up, is ostensibly about espionage. Yet, the journey from the opening scenes in East Berlin to the final act is anything but straightforward. The plot weaves through a maze of shadowy organisations, nuclear threats, CIA and KGB agents, a missing scientist’s daughter, a Nazi sympathiser’s niece, a mysterious watch, an undercover MI6 operative, an island fortress, a crucial data disc, and a fair amount of double-crossing. It’s little wonder that the details don’t stick in the mind.
Tarantino’s Take: Lost in the Labyrinth
For a time, Tarantino was enjoying himself. But as the story grew ever more tangled, he realised he was meant to be following a plot that had become needlessly complicated.
“The first half was really funny and terrific,”
he admitted.
“But in the whole second half, I’m like, ‘Oh, wait a minute, were we supposed to care about the bomb? What the fuck is going on here? I was supposed to pay attention to the stupid story?”
It’s not hard to imagine that he believed he could have delivered a sharper version. In fact, he once considered making his own take on The Man from UNCLE, telling the Village Voice he’d
“flirted with the idea of a Man from UNCLE movie,”
before deciding he’d outgrown the concept. Ritchie, on the other hand, pressed on, joining a long list of directors and writers who’d tried to bring the 1960s TV series to the big screen. Steven Soderbergh nearly managed it, with a script by Scott Z Burns, Emily Blunt lined up for the lead female role, and George Clooney in talks to play Napoleon Solo, but the project never materialised.
Style Over Substance?
Despite a few standout moments—Hugh Grant, for instance, makes the most of his limited screen time—the film doesn’t linger in the memory as a classic of the spy genre. It’s curious, then, that a cinephile as devoted as Tarantino found himself surprised by the need to keep track of the plot. For all its gloss and energy, the film’s story simply failed to hold his attention, leaving him, and perhaps many others, wondering what exactly they were meant to care about.