Steven Soderbergh Confirms Involvement in Man From U.N.C.L.E. Movie

While talking to the radio show Studio 360 (via Hollywood Reporter), director Steven Soderbergh appeared to confirm his involvement in the feature film version of The Man From U.N.C.L.E.  "Liberace [a biopic with Matt Damon] and Man From U.N.C.L.E. are the only two things I'm obligated to do," the director said in a discussion of his much-mooted impending retirement.  (He confirmed that rumor, too... but only up to a point, claiming that "the tyranny of narrative is just starting to really wear on me."  It seems like he's burnt out right now, but he doesn't rule out returning to Hollywood in the future, and it sounds like he might continue to make more artistic independents anyway.)  Soderbergh's involvement with The Man From U.N.C.L.E. has been whispered about since a Hollywood Reporter story last November reported that the director was "in talks" for the project.  But this is the first time I've seen it confirmed from the horse's mouth, so to speak.  He also confirms George Clooney's involvement (which has been widely rumored for nearly as long), and doesn't contradict host Kurt Anderson when Anderson surmises that Clooney will be playing Napoleon Solo, the titular spy originated on the Sixties TV show by Robert Vaughn.  Even in the stories about Clooney's attachment, I hadn't seen it actually said by anyone official that he would definitely be playing Solo, though that's what most people assumed.  He could have conceivably been boss Mr. Waverly or an entirely new character.

Soderbergh's next spy movie, Haywire, starring MMA fighter Gina Carano, Michael Douglas, Ewan  McGregor and Michael Fassbender (among many others) is currently scheduled to open in August, after bouncing around quite a lot.  Filming was completed some time ago.  A few set photos from Haywire (showing Carano in a wetsuit beating up McGregor on a beach) leaked today, and you can see them on Collider.

New Spy DVDs Out Last Week: Archer and The American

I don't think there are any major new spy releases this week, but there were two last week that I didn't get a chance to post about.  And one of them is a must-have, in my book.  Last Tuesday was my birthday (thank you, thank you) and Fox Home Entertainment decided to honor that by releasing my favorite new spy series of last year on DVD: Archer: The Complete Season One. A workplace comedy about a Bond-like (or, more accurately, Eurospy-like) superspy who's also a huge jerk and his dysfunctional family (some of them literally, some only figuratively) who all work at the spy agency, Archer is a show that lends itself to rewatching.  It's not for all tastes, though.  While the amazing Bond-inspired retro look of the FX series will appeal to Sixties spy fans, the sense of humor is more appropriate for fans of South Park or people not easily offended by the ribald. Personally, I think it's hilarious. 

Fox's 2-disc set boasts plenty of extras. Among them: the original unaired Archer pilot (I'm really looking forward to seeing that!), an unaired network promo, deleted scenes, a six-part "The Making Of Archer" featurette ("3D", "Animation", "Art Direction", "Backgrounds", "Illustration" and "Storyboards"), and bonus episodes from unrelated FX sitcoms The League and Louie (the latter of which is quite funny, if not at all spy-related).

I'm particularly excited about all of that behind-the-scenes material.  Archer is a great looking show, and I'm eager to see more about what goes into it.  It's so good looking, in fact, that I'm sorry this release is DVD only, and not on Blu-ray as well. I rarely care about that, but this is one series that would look great in HD. Oh well. At this year's Comic-Con panel, the creators of Archer went into a bit of detail about creating the look of Archer's perpetual Cold War world, which incorporates Bondian elements of every era from the Sixties to the Eighties to now (including suits that could have come off of Sean Connery's shoulders, stylish Sixties office furnature and a Living Daylights Aston Martin Volante).  They said that the design team was constantly flipping through Sixties style and design and fashion magazines, picking what they liked.  I hope that's in the documentary.  It's a shame that the Comic-Con panel itself isn't included, but it's hard to complain when there's so much else.  Archer: The Complete Season 1 retails for $29.98, but naturally it's significantly less on Amazon.

Meanwhile, that same day Universal released director Anton Corbijn's George Clooney assassin thriller meditation The American on both DVD and Blu-ray.  I'm really glad the studio has the courage to stick with that awesome theatrical poster art and not just stick a bluish close-up of Clooney's face on the front instead! Extras on both versions include deleted scenes, an audio commentary with Corbijn, and a featurette called (rather uncreatively) "Journey to Redemption: The Making of The American."  Retail is $29.98 for the DVD and $39.98 for the Blu-ray, but of course both can be found much cheaper than that. They're currently $14.99 and $23.99, respecitvely, on Amazon. While I didn't find The American to be quite as profound as it seemed to think it was, I really liked it nonetheless.  (Read my review here.) It's not fast-paced, but it does offer lots of beautiful location photography, which is a crucial element for me in good spy and assassin movies. It's a great looking movie, and I'm looking forward to watching it again.

George Clooney Looking To Be Soderbergh's Man From U.N.C.L.E.?

Film to be set in the Sixties!

The Playlist reports (via AICN) that George Clooney is (unsurprisingly, I guess, given their history of collaboration) circling the Steven Soderbergh-helmed incarnation of Warners' long-in-development Man From U.N.C.L.E. movie that we first heard about yesterday.  And, more excitingly, the website also reports that Soderbergh plans to retain the TV show's 1960s setting!  The Playlist seems like a fairly reliable source when it comes to Soderbergh; they were the ones who first reported that his upcoming spy movie had changed its title from Knockout to Haywire and that it had been delayed until next spring.  The Sixties setting really, really excites me!  I hope this movie is serious(ish) and not a parody, because I would love to see a modern action movie set in that period.  We've already had great parodies in the form of the two recent OSS 117 films, but could Matthew Vaughn's upcoming Sixties-set (and Avengers-inspired) X-Men prequel foretell a new trend of period action movies?  I sure hope so! 

George Clooney's potential attachment excites me less than the time period.  Don't get me wrong; I love Clooney, and I'd love to see him play a superspy.  But he's really too old to be Napoleon Solo.  (He's almost as old as Robert Vaughn was in the reunion movie The Return of the Man From U.N.C.L.E.: The Fifteen Years Later Affair!)  I'd much rather see Clooney play Matt Helm.  Of course, just because he's planning to star in the movie doesn't necessarily mean that he'll be playing Napoleon Solo.  After all, Tom Cruise starred in Mission: Impossible, but he wasn't Jim Phelps.  I doubt that Clooney is signing up to be Mr. Waverly, but I suppose it's possible that he could be another U.N.C.L.E. agent or, if this movie really is, as The Playlist asserts, taking U.N.C.L.E. back to "its roots," perhaps a mentor to a younger Solo and Kuryakin.  Anything is possible at this point.  What I do like about a potential Clooney/Soderbergh team-up is that it would seem to indicate a tone along the lines of their Ocean's 11 remake, which I think would be pretty appropriate for The Man From U.N.C.L.E.  And if Clooney really is playing a fifty-year-old Solo, well, that's not that bad.  There are much worse choices out there!  (And he certainly proved in The American that he's in top physical shape for his age.)

Previous Clooney/Soderbergh spy collaborations include The Good German (which I remember liking quite a lot, but needed to re-read my review to remember anything that actually happened in it!), Syriana and Confessions of a Dangerous Mind.  (Soderbergh didn't direct the latter two, but they were produced through his and Clooney's Section 8 Films.)  At one point, they had hoped to team up on a Matt Helm movie more in keeping with the Dean Martin movies than the serious Donald Hamilton novels, and I believe that was also meant to be Sixties-set.  Clooney's most recent spyish movie was The American (review here).  Bear in mind that while a script is being written by Scott Z. Burns based on Soderbergh's take, nothing is yet set in stone about this Man From U.N.C.L.E. movie, and plenty of other incarnations over the years have fallen by the wayside.

Movie Review: The American (2010)

It’s amazing how many elements The American (based on the book A Very Private Gentleman by Martin Booth) shares in common with the 1969 James Coburn movie Hard Contract. Both are slow-paced, existential assassin movies that generally eschew action in favor of philosophy and beautiful scenery. Both star iconoclastic leading men with famous smiles, liberal attitudes and a taste for quirkier roles. Both feature washed-up assassins (and what other variety of movie assassins are there?) who seek their sexual gratification from prostitutes in order to avoid forming any lasting connections, and who go off to Italy, meet a priest and a girl and discuss good and evil with the former and fall in love with the latter and eventually need to protect either or both from their assassin bosses, who naturally come after them in the end. That’s a remarkable set of similarities between the two films, but the same elements ultimately add up to entirely different wholes. Both obviously showcase the emptiness of a life dedicated to death and champion the importance of human connection, but then what assassin movie doesn’t? (The Matador still does that the best.) But the plots of the two films (such as The American has one, anyway) are different, as are their overall tones. The American doesn’t really break new ground in the plaintive assassin genre, but director Anton Corbijn still manages to tell the story as if it’s fresh, and he’s aided immeasurably by good performances, strikingly gorgeous locations and equally attractive stars.

The bodies of both George Clooney (in fantastic shape even at 49) and the breathtaking Violante Placido as Clara, the prostitute he falls in love with, are on full display (including in the steamiest love scene I’ve seen all year), fetishized as much as the breathtaking Italian countryside. Why all this beauty? I’d hazard that its purpose is to contrast sharply with death and destruction, two things which Clooney’s character (identified only as “Mr. Butterfly” after his peculiar tattoo) has devoted his life to. Like the movie as a whole, that contrast is less profound than Corbijn seems to think it is, but it’s certainly serviceable, especially when executed so capably. Clooney travels from one beautiful location to another (starting in scenic, snowy Scandinavia, always a favorite spy setting of mine) and taints them all with violence. His dark profession infects everyone he comes into contact with, even if it doesn’t mean for it to. After a romantic interlude at an isolated Swedish cabin ends in a bloodbath, it’s no wonder that he wants out of his profession. Exactly who he works for is never made clear: it could be a spy agency or a crime syndicate or a totally apolitical freelance outfit, but it doesn’t really matter. What matters is the nature of the work, which in the view presented here is the same no matter what the cause.

The American is a movie that leaves you with questions, sure, but not ones that you’re likely to find yourself pondering for days on end, like, say, Mulholland Drive. Instead my reaction was more, “well, it’s okay if the filmmakers didn’t really want to tell me everything. They still made a very pretty movie that I enjoyed watching for two hours, and I’ll take that. But I doubt I’ll really spend too much time poring over what it all means.”

Mr. Butterfly flees to the countryside, makes a few human connections (the aforementioned priest and prostitute) and reluctantly agrees to take on one last assignment. He doesn’t even have to pull the trigger; he simply has to make the weapon and deliver it to a beautiful, deadly young woman who could easily be his replacement in the world he’s trying to turn his back on. Not everything goes as planned (or maybe it does) and eventually his old employer shows up wanting to kill him. Violence ensues. That’s the plot, and that’s pretty much the entire plot. Yet I haven’t spoiled it, because it’s not really possible to spoil. The plot is just things that happen. That’s not what the movie’s about, and it doesn’t even bother to explain most of them. The movie is about the characters and the scenery and the interaction thereof detrimental to both. It’s sort of a tone poem, a meditation on violence sure to disappoint or even infuriate anyone expecting a Bourne-like action movie, for which a prospective viewer could be forgiven given the marketing campaign. Personally, I wasn’t disappointed. I didn’t totally buy into The American's delusions of profundity, but I didn’t mind looking at the images it had to show me, either, or weighing the themes it traded in. It delivered all the exotic locations and all the sex and even all the iconography of action (if not the action itself) that I expect from a good spy movie. Like the lead character when customizing a sniper rifle, Corbijn took apart all these pieces and reassembled them into something different, but for me the pieces themselves are reward enough. If you ever find yourself responding more to the visual tropes of a spy movie than to its actual plot, chances are you’ll find something to like in The American. If you demand plot and action (which are totally reasonable demands, by the way), then you may be disappointed.

Upcoming Spy DVDs: The American

DVDActive reports that Universal Home Video has announced DVD and Blu-ray releases of the George Clooney assassin thriller meditation The American for December 28–another birthday present for me!  I'm really glad the studio has the courage to stick with that awesome theatrical poster art and not just stick a bluish close-up of Clooney's face on the front instead. Extras on both versions will include deleted scenes, an audio commentary with director Anton Corbijn, and a featurette called (rather uncreatively) "Journey to Redemption: The Making of The American."  Retail is $29.98 for the DVD and $39.98 for the Blu-ray, but of course you won't have to actually pay those prices if you shop around. While I didn't find The American to be quite as profound as it seemed to think it was, I really liked it nonetheless.  It's not fast-paced, but it does offer lots of beautiful location photography, which is a crucial element for me in good spy and assassin movies.

Poster For The American

I like this new poster for the George Clooney assassin movie The American.  Frankly, I'm dubious that any movie in this genre can top Pierce Brosnan's awesome turn in The Matador, but I think both trailers look good nonetheless.  Beautiful European locations, beautiful women, international intrigue, a priest with a gun and Clooney as an assassin... I'm in.  And that stark one-sheet is really great. You can watch both trailers on Yahoo's page for the movie.  The American opens September 1.