Film Review: MEN IN BLACK 3 (MIB3)

The film was simply superb, well-directed and tightly edited

Cast: Will Smith, Tommy Lee Jones, Josh Brolin, Jemaine Clement, Michael Stuhlbarg
Director: Barry Sonnenfeld

This is the third film in the Men In Black series. I have watched the first two on television at my son Vignesh’s persuasion and had felt quite revolted with the ugly aliens that crawl all over the films. Despite that, he suggested that Venkat and I accompany him to MIB3. Venkat agreed immediately while I was pretty hesitant. Viggy convinced me saying that it was an opportunity for me to write a review on my blog. Also, recently I have been reading a lot about the Extra-terrestrials and Galactics who have moved to earth to help human beings to shift to The Golden Age. That finally clinched the matter and the three of us went to Cinemax Sion to watch the 10 pm show on Saturday.

THE STORY:

Boris the animal (Jemaine Clement) is an alien who has been incarcerated on the prison on the Moon since 40 years. It was Agent K (Tommy Lee Jones) who had had Boris arrested, after chopping off his left arm. Boris manages to escape prison and his first job is to find a way to go back in time and kill Agent K before he cut off his arm. He does just that and it seems that only Agent J (Will Smith), K’s partner, seems to miss K. Everyone else in the secret agency is clear that K had died forty years ago. That’s when J decides to go back to 1969 and ensure that K survives. The only way to do that is to kill Boris in 1969. Will J be able to manage this?

MY PERCEPTION:

The film was simply superb, well-directed and tightly edited, running for an hour and 45 minutes. There were not too many ugly aliens and the scenes portraying time travel were simply beautiful. I only wish we had watched it on Imax’s Big Screen. I remember seeing the promos of MIB3 there and it had felt as if I had been a part of the movie.

Will Smith acted very well as the emotionally attached Agent J while Tommy Lee Jones as the stiff-faced Agent K was equally good. The surprise package was the young Agent K from 1969 played by Josh Brolin. Brolin looked quite a bit like a younger version of Tommy Lee Jones and fitted the bill perfectly.

The film moves fast and smooth keeping the audience hooked from beginning till end. I would have enjoyed it better with captions as I did not understand each and every dialogue uttered as I could easily do in The Avengers.

The surprise element was the presence of Griffin (Michael Stuhlbarg), a highly evolved being from the fifth dimension with intense eyes. Griffin is the one who finally manages to help Agent K place the ArcNet around the earth to protect the planet. I have been doing a lot of reading up about the fifth dimension into which the earth will be moving on December 21, 2012. Vignesh and I were quite fascinated to know that such a character was part of a Hollywood film.

VERDICT: You must watch it if you are fond of Sci-fi.

RATING: ****Snazzy

*Silly
**Shaky
***Smart
****Snazzy
*****Super