The 'Man From U.N.C.L.E.' Stars Play Spy Games: Which is Better, the KGB or the CIA?

The Man From U.N.C.L.E. may be steeped in retro Cold War spy games, but its cast still needs to do more intel-gathering when it comes to government- sponsored espionage. Yahoo Movies recently quizzed fetching costars Armie Hammer, Henry Cavill, Elizabeth Debicki and Alicia Vikander, as well as director Guy Ritchie and his writing partner, Lionel Wigram, about some realpolitik. Their new 1960s-set movie — about a CIA agent (Cavill) and a KGB spy (Hammer) forced to team up for a mission — hits theaters on Friday.

First, we asked the cast and crew which was better: the KGB or the CIA? Hammer and Cavill immediately got stuck in the semantics: Does the KGB still exist? Ritchie and Wigram agreed that the KGB is cooler, even though they had no idea what the acronym KGB stands for. Leave it to Cavill to point out the obvious: Since the CIA is still around and the KGB isn’t, who’s the real winner here? “Make love, not war,” added Debicki.

The cast also had some explaining to do about how the characters were able to get around so easily without GPS technology. “It’s some Guy Ritchie magic going on there,” said Vikander, while Hammer argued that there was in fact a primitive GPS at the time. Cavill, for his part, jumped in with the obvious, low-tech answer: “maps.“