In Black and back, with heart

Film review: Men In Black 3

MANILA, Philippines - The first thing that must be said about this third installment of the Men In Black franchise is that director Barry Sonnenfeld successfully aims for far more than humor and laughs via the by-now familiar scenario of aliens on Earth, and the always-at-odds relationship between Agent K (Tommy Lee Jones) and his protégé-partner Agent J (Will Smith).

In a sense, this is the film that provides all that, while coming full circle and exhibiting an inordinate amount of heart and poignancy via its ingenious screenplay (Take a bow, Etan Cohen, who worked on Tropic Thunder and Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa).

It’s the present day, and on a lunar prison, one-armed Boris the Animal (Jemaine Clement from Flight of the Conchords) escapes and heads back to Earth, with the purpose of traveling back in time to aid the Boris of 1969, who was then apprehended by Agent K, and lost his arm during the arrest. When we encounter K and J, they’re in a ruminative mood, with J exasperated over how despite their partnership, K constantly keeps his cards close to his chest, and J knows practically nothing about K’s past or private life. When J awakens one morning and finds K mysteriously expunged from his life, he approaches Agent O (Emma Thompson), who eventually realizes that Boris must have somehow succeeded, and tells J he must now travel back to 1969 and reverse what transpired back then, that K died while trying to stop Boris. I won’t spoil the rest of the intricate storyline that unfolds, highlights of which are the young K (Josh Brolin) and encounters with the likes of Andy Warhol and the Amazing New York Mets.

Smith and Jones are their reliable selves, and the surprise here is Brolin, playing K with the right amount of restraint, and yet exhibiting a different, more open as younger, K persona. The character Griffin (Michael Stuhlberg) is also a joy to watch, he’s an alien who operates simultaneously in different temporal dimensions — confusing, but exhilarating! The parade of aliens may be expected by now, but where the surprise to this film comes from is totally unexpected, and this is the “heart and poignancy” I mentioned.

When we finally discover why K is the gruff, surly person he has been over the first two films, and the origin of his relationship with J; despite the fact that this runs only for a couple of minutes, we’re moved and touched in a manner that we didn’t expect in a MIB film. For those moments alone, and what transpires when J travels back to the present day, I would rank this film as good as the very first, which catapulted the buddy tandem into cinematic icon status. I’d like to thank Sony Bravia for the special screening they invited me and my three boys to. Uniformly, my three sons all agreed that this is one great sequel, as it took them by surprise.