Media: Cinematic release.
When I heard they were finally concluding the trilogy of Men in Black earlier this year I was taken back to a time where I first having people refer to me as "El" and consequently as just "L"... Those were much simpler times back then... MIB3 runs on a similar parallel in the sense that Agent J is sent back to a period where "simpler times" was the norm...
When Will Smith's character of Agent J is tasked to solve his partner K's mysterious disappearance from the time stream, he gets pulled from his usual comfortable environment and thrust into 1969... Where K's younger self played by a remarkably accurate Josh Brolin joins forces with J to set things right, including the capture of Boris, a very... angry alien who wants to kill off everyone in MIB...
Brolin's portrayal of Tommy Lee Jones's Agent K from 1969... Well, what can I say... It defies description... His intimations, slight nuances and even the southern drawl that Tommy has are hypnotic... The fact that Josh can practically become a younger version of a well-known character like K and nail it time after time after time is incredible... It's so convincing that I'm compelled to watch his portrayal of George W. Bush in W very soon...
Sadly, with plusses there are a few minuses... Zed, played previously by Rip Torn (now 81) has been replaced by Emma Thompson, on the premise that Zed has passed on... And her portrayal of being a chief of MIB staff seems a little lackluster in comparison to her 1969 counterpart played by Alice Eve... It's not convincing enough... Frank the dog, is also absent from the film, as well as Tony Shaloub's Jack Jeebs... So a lot of the humor has to come from the Smith-Jones-Brolin dynamic within the film than from these secondary characters... despite Thompson's one main attempt to gain a few laughs from the audience, which from my observation in the cinema was a lot of questioning as to whether Thompson was suffering from a mild form of Tourette's...
However, the film does redeem itself with an incredible twist which ties in the first film perfectly... It had me blown away and left me wanting to go home and see the first film just to see the links to the this film... Men in Black 3 has my approval and my respect, as well as a rating of 4½ stars... If they make a fourth film... And this is a very remote "if", I'd be very happy to see what they come up with...
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