Title: Men in Black 3
Cast: Will Smith (Actor), Tommy Lee Jones (Actor), Barry Sonnenfeld (Director)
Genre: Sci-Fi Action
Watched: December 1, 2012
Summary: Surprisingly decent
I picked this up because of the time travel angle, but it turned out to be a pretty fun film. It’s not high art, and in fact it doesn’t have anything new to say about time travel, or anything else either. It’s also a ridiculous romp. A clear guilty pleasure.
We begin with a good villain: Borris the Animal. He’s plenty zany and has one arm and a face hugger that lives in his remaining hand. He also has it out for Tommy Lee Jones, who locked him up 40 years earlier. When he breaks out of his lunar prison, he wants nothing more than to travel back in time and kill our taciturn hero. Which he does. Will Smith then has to head back himself and put things to right.
Josh Brolin plays “young Agent K” (Jones). The resemblance is uncanny, in looks, in voice, in mannerism. Jones himself isn’t even in the film for more than a few minutes. There isn’t any time travel paradox here. There’s just hunt down the villain and try to kill him. But the film luxuriates in campy 1969 visual gags. Costumes, Andy Wharhol, the Apollo 11 launch, and so on. It’s like Madmen without the drama. The rocket launch really is pretty cool.
MIB puts its money on screen. There isn’t a normal shot in the whole film. Aliens abound. Not exactly realistic. The tech difference over 40 years is handled in the same over-simplified manner as in X-men first class. Everything is the same, except it was bigger then, with 60s styling. Guns: bigger. Memory eraser: bigger. Aliens, definitely bigger (and slimier).
Michael Stuhlbarg (Boardwalk Empire‘s Arnold Rothstein) plays a very amusing four dimensional being. Defiantly found him groovy. I can’t even remember the second MIB, but this one has to be better.