“The Man from UNCLE” is new on Netflix – but Armie Hammer is still there

For almost a decade, I have been checking from time to time to see if Guy Ritchie’s 2015 spy story The man from “UNCLE” was available for casual streaming. As a spy movie, I enjoyed it more than any James Bond or Jason Bourne film, or even any Mission: Impossible movie – Ethan Hunt’s big stunts and endless face swaps make for entertainment in the theater, but rarely stick in my mind for long. The man from “UNCLE” has a special form of ensemble energy that none of those movies have. It’s also a film built around a few really special, endlessly replayable scenes, which makes easy streaming access more appealing than owning a copy. So I was thrilled when it finally hit Netflix on July 27—except that now I have to figure out what I think of Armie Hammer.

To summarize: Ritchie’s The man from “UNCLE” is a reboot of the 1960s television series of the same name, and takes visual cues from 1960s thrillers, particularly in its sharp, eye-catching costume designs. The plot sees two 1960s spies – CIA agent Napoleon Solo (Henry Cavill) and KGB agent Illya Kuryakin (Hammer) – first face off in the field and then forced to work together to stop a nuclear threat. From the start, they despise each other. At one point a fight sees them trash a run-down bathroom. Later, they limit the violence to verbal barbs. In this conflict, they are absolute bitches, insulting each other’s countries, bodies, and brains, and both sulk or squirm when the other makes a particularly apt witty remark.

Women also appear in this film – Alicia Vikander as Gaby, a civil servant who both have to protect, and Elizabeth Debicki (recently notable in Maxxxine) as the villain, a Nazi-sympathetic sociopath. Both do their best to add to the uber-cool ’60s spy vibe. Debicki has a particularly great scene with Cavill, a classic of a spy movie, where they try to outwit and seduce each other. Vikander has a tougher job as a character largely stuck in the victim/winner role, with a particularly questionable scene where she tries to seduce Kuryakin, only to act like a brat because she’s under his protection.

But they are both still backdrops for the actual show in The man from “UNCLE” — Two muscular, dangerous men exchange nonstop one-liners about how much they hate each other as they work to defeat a particularly sleek and stylish evil – and, more importantly, as they build toward a heavily implied prisoner’s dilemma moment in which one or both of them must decide whether to betray the other.

I love everything about Cavill and Hammer’s performances and how they’re cast in this film, as equals in radically different modes and as spy-movie paragons with just enough vulnerability beneath their masks. Ritchie and co-writer Lionel Wigram let Solo be a smirking, superior bastard until he sees what Kuryakin is capable of as an opponent, and at that point he’s genuinely unsettled. They engage in a sulky, Legolas-and-Gimli-style competition over who can pull off stealthy infiltration better and who has the better techniques or equipment. Even in the inevitable Bond-derived capture and torture sequence, Solo falls grimly silent in the face of a monologuing villain, clearly unsettled by the prospect of torment and death, rather than reacting by laughed and joked about his kidnapper.

I love this movie. But there’s the Armie Hammer problem.

When a movie star falls from public grace, whether deserved or not, it’s easy to sidestep ethical questions about continuing to consume their work: “You have to separate the art from the artist.” Or “Boycotting their production would be unfair to everyone else who worked on the project.” Or “All he gets is two cents if I stream the movie, so… whatever.” I’ve never really felt comfortable with these arguments; they all feel more like excuses than decisions about how to deal with an artist’s real-life behavior.

And I feel similarly uncomfortable with some aspects of the Hammer scandal. His Career imploded in 2021 when a former partner posted on Instagram that he had sent her text messages about his violent sexual fantasies. Soon, other ex-partners came forward and accused him of physical, mental and sexual abuse and assault. A police investigation was launched, but Charges were never brought due to lack of evidenceHammer insisted that fantasies were just fantasies and that the horrific events his ex-partners described did indeed happen but were part of negotiated, consensual BDSM scenes.

I have mixed feelings about all of this, and they are in direct conflict with one another. There is no easy way to reconcile my dislike of the fetish shaming and invasion of privacy in this case with my frustration with victim blaming and the culture of disbelief toward women who call out bad behavior by powerful men. Or my dislike of the prurient, gleeful, endlessly self-righteous interest the media and social media users showed in Hammer’s explicit, violent lyrics about breaking a partner’s bones and drinking her blood.

I didn’t want to get into Armie Hammer’s head or his sex life. But I also didn’t want to give him a free pass with a casual “Well, it’s a situation where he said it and she said it.” I sympathize with the women who feel he used alcohol, drugs, money, fame and charm to lure them into situations where consent was complicated and compromised. In situations involving people’s private relationships and especially their sex lives, I personally believe it’s impossible to find an objective truth because everyone involved experienced the same events so differently. (A point made by the recent Best Picture nominee Anatomy of a fall examined explicitly and with many fascinating nuances.)

In any case like this, I remind myself, above all, that I have no power to affect the outcome, and that no one needs another whining voice in the crowd standing up for a celebrity or for total strangers. I am not on a jury. I am not being forced to have an opinion about who wronged whom the most. And I recognize that people (and especially the internet hordes) love a black-and-white narrative of good versus evil—like, for example, The man from “UNCLE”in which goofy but heroic patriots band together to literally fight nuclear-armed Nazis – the real world is almost never that simple.

The question of Armie Hammer is a little more complicated at this moment because he seems to be launching a trial balloon for a comeback. After a few years of invisibility, after losing his representation and his existing contracts, he is suddenly back in the news with some detailed interviews with carefully selected interlocutors: Bill Maher and Piers Morgan, men on whom Hammer could absolutely rely to pat him on the back and show compassion for “the injustice of the woke mob”, accept his “Well, I barely carved my initials into her hip” and don’t really question his side of the story. Man from UNCLE finally available on streaming format after nearly 10 years, just as Hammer comes out of hiding… the timing feels a little odd, to say the least.

But a Netflix premiere also seems far too insignificant to serve as a trial balloon to measure how much people remember or care about the allegations against Hammer, beyond the memes and cannibal jokes. The interviews are much more meaningful — and since they focus so much on how Hammer downplays all the allegations against him, they’re much more of a step toward a rehabilitation tour and a return to acting. He’s said all the requisite things from the Hollywood comeback checklist — that he learned from the experience that losing his fame and fortune was good for him because it showed him who his true friends were and kept his ego in check. He’s said the whole scandal was positive for him overall. I would be very surprised, however, if that would stop him from returning to Hollywood if a second act becomes possible.

After just a few days on Netflix, The man from “UNCLE” is already on the list of the top 10 most-streamed movies. That’s no surprise – it happens with pretty much every big Hollywood action movie that wasn’t available on one of the more popular streaming services. Watching it again will certainly remind you why Hammer was a star: He’s charismatic. He has solid comedic timing. He excels in that kind of serious guy/square role. And he brings an appealing menace to certain characters – a menace that may even be enhanced by all the things we can’t forget about him.

But as much as I love that movie, watching it again is just another reminder of how thoroughly people tend to abuse power, fame, and money and use them as a weapon against everyone else. And that’s just an exhausting thing. reminds of every Time We turn aroundespecially in a country that worships all three of these things so openly and slavishly.

I have a scene from The man from “UNCLE”this weekend, however – a standout scene midway through the film where Kuryakin gets into trouble and Cavill’s character Solo sighs from a safe vantage point and sits comfortably listening to music and eating a stolen sandwich while simultaneously considering whether to help Hammer’s character out of the situation he’s gotten himself into. I’m just like him, watching Armie Hammer’s comeback attempt and trying to figure out if I can go back to his films in good conscience. If only that wasn’t a decision we have to make for ourselves over and over again.