I remember the original MEN IN BLACK, back in 1997, well and fondly, but I think I have been neutralised about the second instalment, a decade ago. Totally forgettable as I remember. A sequel not the equal.
Thankfully, MEN IN BLACK 3 is back in the black –funny, smart, tight, slick – a kind of Black to the Future.
Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones are reprising their roles as Agents J and K and they are joined by Agent O, Emma Thompson.
Film begins in rip roaring fashion, with a an audacious lunar prison breakout by a kind of alien Hannibal Lecter, Boris the Monster, played by Jemaine Clement of FLIGHT OF THE CONCHORDS fame. He has a blast channeling Hugo Weaving via Anthony Hopkins. He is the last surviving specimen of a rapacious race and is hell bent on revenge against Agent K who took his arm and incarcerated him back in 1969.
And it’s back in 1969 that most of this movie is set. A watershed year when science fiction became science fact with humans setting forth and stepping down on the moon.
Time travel can be a slippery slope but the filmmakers handle it quite cleverly, keeping the pace so that you can’t stop and think too much.
A character called Griffin (Michael Stuhlbarg) – he played the lead in the Cohen brothers A SIMPLE MAN a few years back- is an encyclopedia of chronosynclastic infidibulum or time jump space continuum – and makes the head spinning theory seriously funny.
In another casting coup, Josh Brolin plays the young Tommy Lee – to a T. Or should that be K? Another great step for the actor, and a further giant leap for his career.
The Sixties counter culture is depicted as a magnet for extraterrestrials to blend in– The Factory, Andy Warhol and Mick Jagger all come in for a roast and a tease, while race relations and civil rights of the time are gently lampooned .
Barry Sonnenfeld is back in the director’s chair, Danny Elfman’s score is terrific, cinematography by Bill Pope who shot the Matrix pictures, creatures by Rick Baker, and production design by Bo Welch who did Beetlejuice and Edward Scissorhands for Tim Burton and the previous MIBs, all work to bring the MEN IN BLACK back into the black and 3D to boot!
© Richard Cotter
23rd May, 2012
Tags: Sydney Movie Reviews- MEN IN BLACK 3, Sydney Arts Guide, Richard Cotter.