Men in Black: International Review

The Men in Black franchise is a bit of a mixed bag. The first film was a great sci-fi comedy, buoyed by strong chemistry between Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones. The second one was pretty bad, undoing all the character work from the first film and being a prime case of sequelitis and I had a good bit of fun with the third one, mainly due to Josh Brolin and Michael Stuhlbarg. This film though is a bit of a departure for the Men in Black series. It’s the first one not to be directed by Barry Sonnenfeld and doesn’t star Will Smith or Tommy Lee Jones, although pairing Tessa Thompson and Chris Hemsworth together again after their work in the MCU did make me mildly anticipated for the film. However, the film itself I found to be a fairly generic sci-fi film, lacking the feel of Men in Black.

The film follows Molly, a woman who encountered an alien when she was a kid and was able to avoid being neuralysed by the Men in Black. Growing up obsessed with the agency, she manages to find the New York HQ and convinces Agent O (from Men in Black 3) to make her an agent, with the codename M. As her first assignment, M gets sent to the London branch of Men in Black where she partners herself up with H, considered to be the best agent in the London branch after an event where him and his boss, High T, stopped an invasion by a species called the Hive. When it looks like the Hive have returned, and that there may be a mole in Men in Black, M and H have to travel across the world to find a way to stop the Hive before they destroy the planet. Now there are interesting ideas at play with the character of H, showing him to be someone who used to be the best agent but who has become complacent and lazy after his previous heroics. This could have been used to explore ideas of the pressure of being a hero or be used for plot reasons, but the ideas that were raised regarding H seem to disappear about two thirds of the way through the film. It’s like they had an interesting ending to H’s character that they cut out at the last minute. This is part of a big problem I have with the film in regards to the pacing. Most of the film is fairly slow for me, setting things up and either not paying them off or having all the set up crammed into a short period of time so it isn’t given time to breath. The big twist of the film is set up, developed and delivered in the space of 5 minutes at the end of the film, when it should have been threaded more naturally throughout the rest of the film. The whole film to me just felt dull. There wasn’t any life to the script and whilst it was good to go outside of New York, the film just didn’t have the same feel as the other Men in Black films. It doesn’t have the more mundane moments of the lives of the agents that made the first film work so well and we don’t get enough time with M before she becomes an agent to really know her character, making her a fairly bland character, especially when compared to J in the first film where we understood exactly why he was chosen to join the Men in Black. The whole thing feels rushed to get from set piece to set piece rather than develop a strong narrative.

What charm the film has is mainly through the cast. Tessa Thompson and Chris Hemsworth have a natural chemistry with each other that makes them a lot of fun to watch on screen. The way the two interact and verbally spar with each other in the first half of the film works pretty well, even if the writing isn’t strong, with Thompson showing how M wants to learn about the Men in Black and is willing to lie her way up the ladder, whilst Hemsworth shows the inept side of H well, continuing to show that he has strong comic timing. Kumail Nanjiani as Pawny, an alien M and H meet on their journey is fun. Again, the script doesn’t give him much to do but Nanjiani is such a strong comic performer that he can bring life to the weak material. Rafe Spall and Liam Neeson though are completely wasted, with the film rushing through the more interesting stuff for their characters, giving them nothing to do, the same being true for Rebecca Ferguson who gets a halfway decent action scene but nothing more and doesn’t have strong enough chemistry with Hemsworth for their scene to work. It was nice to have Kayvan Novak in a big blockbuster film and he does bring some life to his performance and, even though it’s an extended cameo, Emma Thompson steals the film when she’s on screen as O.

On a technical level, the film is a mixed bag. It is nice to see the title font and hear the music from the previous Men in Black films again, a nice show that this film is in continuity with the other Men in Black films and there are some good background details referencing the other films and which celebrities are aliens in this film. I also liked the production design for the Men in Black offices, the train station aesthetic just being pleasing to me and showing off how Men in Black mostly acts as an alien focused customs agency. The CG is a bit of a mixed bag, being pretty good for when the Men in Black are hiding their actions from the public and there are some good alien designs, but there are a few moments where the CG looks a bit fake to me. The action though felt fairly flat to me. Some moments felt incredibly rushed, but others were over extended and just felt boring after a while and there wasn’t enough visually interesting work done to make them stand out, they’re the kind of action scenes you can get in any generic sci-fi film.

Overall, I was disappointed with Men in Black: International. There are some good moments, mainly due to the chemistry between Tessa Thompson and Chris Hemsworth, but the rest of the film feels fairly generic. There were interesting ideas that weren’t given the attention they deserved and the ending is one of the most rushed I’ve seen in recent years and it shows just how much the first Men in Black was lightning in a bottle.

My Rating: 2.5/5