This triquel has finally landed on Earth, and driving the ship is director Barry Sonnenfeld taking us on a ride in “Men in Black III”.
The intergalactic, alien peace keeping duo of Will Smith (Agent J), and Tommy Lee Jones (Agent K), are back for another alien crime fighting adventure.
However, with Josh Brolin playing a younger K throughout half the movie, Smith, Jones, and Brolin became a star-studded trio fitting for this third installment of the “Men in Black” franchise.
From the beginning, the story lays out the plot and leaves the remainder of the film for resolution as we learn that Boris the Animal, played by Jemaine Clement, has escaped from the Lunar Max Prison with ill intentions for K.
On Earth, we pick back up on J and K as the partners are engaged with their usual alien monitoring activity. Viewers immediately see the short punned chemistry we have become accustomed to with Jones and Smith in their previous films.
The two are preparing for a funeral ceremony for a co-worker as J offers some light-hearted advice on how to speak publicly in front of people at the ceremony to the never smiling, always business like K. As usual, the all-knowing K is reluctant of any advice from his younger partner.
With a new leader of the Men in Black organization, Agent O, played by Emma Thompson, O’s first mission is to inform J and K that Boris has escaped from prison.
Plotting his revenge for K locking him up over 40 years ago, Boris decides to go back in time and kill K rendering him non-existent in the future. As J appears confused about the reluctant and peculiar behavior of K not telling him about the Boris incident, it sparks a heated argument leaving J upset with K.
Returning to work the next day with a missing K, J thinks that K is playing a trick on him. After discovering that K was killed 40 years ago, J realizes in a butterfly effect scenario that he needs to travel to the past to inform the 29-year-old K that he needs to kill Boris instead of locking him up in prison.
Traveling to the late 60s, J meets up with a younger K played by Josh Brolin, and the two begin their hunt for Boris. The two’s encounter with Andy Warhol, cameo by Bill Hader, offers that nostalgic 60s feel with some added historic humor.
While J is doing his best to save K, he learns some life altering things about his past that opens his eyes to the seemingly cold and calculated partner relationship with K.
Smith lights up the screen with his witty and suave character portrayal of J, and Brolin nails the character and mannerisms of Jones’s character in K.
Jones looks quite older from his previous installments of this franchise, but with a ten year hiatus from the previous “Men in Black II,” that tends to happen. With a lighter side to Jones’s character, we finally begin to see some emotion from the snappy K.
Smith, Jones, and Brolin fill the black suits in nicely with their evident chemistry throughout the film.
With a PG-13 rating, there are some graphic alien computer generated sequences that may be a little disturbing for children, but for teens and up this film deserves three out of five star’s for action, and crime fighting alien adventure worthy of this or any other universe.
