Has there ever been a name as American as Armie Hammer? It is a cartoonish name with inbuilt stars and stripes, the sort of name that insists on a father named Jack and a son called Sledge, a name that behooves a pro-wrestler, a porn-star or a GI Joe action figure. As an actor, the blonde, light-eyed Californian is unsurprisingly remembered from solidly American parts, like that of a cowboy or a moneyed Harvard student.

Trust recklessly cheeky director Guy Ritchie, therefore, to take this Golden Age superhero and douse him in an Absolut accent, cherry-picking him for the part of a roughnecked Russian. Meanwhile, Henry Cavill, a remarkable specimen of British beefcake, is here made to play an impossibly suave American, as campily as Roger Moore. The Man From UNCLE, based on an old American television show, is thus nothing more than a Cold War themed party, a game…