Movie Review: Men in Black 3 (2012)

Torchwood is an organization founded to protect mankind in the event
of alien incursion and to make use of their technology for the sake of
the human race.  When time traveler Jack became its leader, the
organization began a policy of erasing the memories of those who came
into contact with them, and separated Torchwood from under the control
of the Great British government so that alien technology could not fall
into the hands of a single Earth nation.



Wait, wrong organization.  Wrong side of the Atlantic.  And wrong ladies’ man.



The Men in Black are an organization founded to protect mankind in
the event of alien incursion.  When Agent X founded them, the Men in
Black obtained technology that allowed them to enforce a policy of
erasing the memories of those who came into contact with them, and
separated themselves from under the control of the United States
government so that alien technology could not fall into the hands of a
single Earth nation.  There’s time travel involved somewhere here, too.



Let me pause you, now that we’re on the right track.  If you haven’t watched 1997′s excellent Men in Black,
there’s no review.  There’s no conversation to be had.  This is a
sequel and while it might be possible to enjoy it without having seen
the first film, why on Earth (if you pardon the expression) would you want to?



Part 2, on the other hand, is optional.  Men in Black III does its best to pretend MIIB
never existed.  Except that it’s pretty much the huge elephant in the
room.  Along with the second film, the last ten minutes or so of the
first film had to go out the window, to the point that J and K act as
though they’ve been partners ever since J was recruited to the MIB. 
Jeebs is nowhere to be seen, neither is Frank, or most of the “Fresh
Prince” brand of comedy that they went so overboard with in the second
film.



However, with a second film with a Victoria’s Secret model for a
villain and no particular fan service in the original, something was
bound to carry over.  The first scene of this movie is a woman in fetish
gear delivering cake to a bound man.  He’s bound because this is a
prison, she’s covered in zippers because… look. The man is Boris the Overacting- I mean, Boris the Animal.  He’s the
villain in this film, and he likes to roar.  It’s like, his favorite
thing to do.  He’d rather roar than keep his girlfriend around after the
prologue.  Not my place to judge, I guess.



Boris the Animal is the last member of a species that K wiped out
forty years ago, during the same battle in which he arrested Boris,
stopped sleeping with the woman that would become his boss when Zed’s
actor didn’t come back for the third movie.  And when K stopped smiling
and feeling things.  And a spoiler.



Once Boris escapes from prison and kills to fail K during the
“introduce the main characters as badasses” scene, Boris finds a man who
has a device that you can use to travel back in time.  I guess that
makes him the Jeebs of this episode.  His head doesn’t grow back,
though. I think. Boris goes back in time, kills K by incredibly lazy methods, and
invites his people to conquer Earth, which takes forty years to happen
because it’s convenient for the plot.  Will Smith is having none of
this, and follows Boris back in time.



It’s unnecessarily slapsticky, but that’s because Boris isn’t all
that smart.  Boris is one of those villains that is smart enough to
break himself out of prison and go back in time, but dumb enough not to
have any kind of plan that’s actually worthy of the word when he gets
there.



Agent J, on the other hand, is pissed off with the fresh rage of
hearing that someone went back in time to kill your friend, and comes up
with a plan to kill Boris before K even meets him.  Obviously, the plot
can’t let that happen, but the conflict of overplanning versus
underplanning leaves J with a whole lot of time in which things were
already going according to plan before J got there.  He could have
helped, but the files on this event were classified because K was being
K, so J has no idea what happened in the first place.



And such is the lens through which Agent J views the 1970s.  Oh damn, the 70s were 40 years ago?  Do I even need to say how depressing that is?  That goes right along with the realization that it’s been nine years since Tommy Lee Jones and Will Smith last wore the black suits on the big screen together.



Josh Brolin does an excellent Tommy Lee Jones.  I was a little iffy
on this going into it, especially after realizing that a blind, deaf man
overdosing on PCP wouldn’t mistake Chris Pine for William Shatner, but
Agent K got a good match.  Brolin is only about twenty years younger
than K, but the makeup department definitely earned their pay on this
feature and it wouldn’t be hard to picture Josh Brolin aging forty years
and becoming Tommy Lee- that is, as long as you keep Joel Shumacher out
of the process.



Smith and Jones deliver the performance we’ve come to expect from
them both.  It seems like Smith’s writing was tempered down, as if out
of concern to invoke memories of the second film if Men in Black III was as “black” as the first film.



Other than the slightly relaxed comedy, Men in Black III is very much keeping to the tone of the first film.  While MIIB skewed way too far in the direction of a Will Smith urban comedy, MIB3 isn’t
nearly as extreme in veering away from it.  The walk through MIB HQ was
just as cool, although someone tried a little hard with the stinger
playing every time they went on an elevator, or walked into HQ, or
appeared on screen, or pretty much did anything.



For my last
negative point, here’s a prime example of what kind of sequel this is:
the kind that plays it safe.  J goes back with the express intent of
changing time.  He wants to kill Boris before he meets K and prevent
this movie from happening.  He interacts with K throughout the entire
movie, and even gives him advice.  You know what this changes?



Spoilers may follow.



What this changes, in its entirety, is that instead of sitting grimly
in the diner, Agent K is bobbing his head and tapping his fingers to
“Empire State of Mind”.  Wooooow.  Completely write-off-able character
change.  Way to push the limits there, guys.



I’ve talked about enough negatives that you might start to think I
don’t like this movie.  This following scene, which I’ll try not to
spoil much, is the key to what I think this movie did right.  I was
spoiled prior to watching this movie that a certain character was set to
appear.  Because they appeared toward the end of the film, I knew who
it was immediately.  A subplot was set up with this character, just
enough that you knew there would be something tragic.  And then, the
character resolved their purpose.



This sounds pretty vague, but if you haven’t seen the film, I don’t want to spoil this scene for you.  If you have
seen it, you know exactly what I’m talking about, and the aftermath. 
And I, for one, found this scene extremely touching.  I’m not one to get
emotional at films (other than angry), but this scene got an emotional
response out of me.  If that’s not a hallmark of a film that deserves a
chance, I don’t know what is.



Bill Silvia is a regular contributor to Fantasy & SciFi Lovin' News & Reviews.  You can find more of his content at www.MiBreviews.com