Men In Black: International

Men In Black: International

By James Davidson

“Men In Black: International” is taking us back, in black, again. The film follows the Men in Black, a secret government organization that protects humanity from aliens. This is the fourth installment in this series. The first three which came out in the early 2000s followed agents Kay and Jay, played by Tommy Lee Jones and Will Smith respectively.

This new chapter follows new Agent M (played by Tessa Thompson), who spent her life seeking out the secret organization after an encounter with aliens as a child. She is partnered with veteran agent H (played by Chris Hemsworth) who saved the world several years earlier, and has never been quite the same since.

The two partners discover that there is a mole in their secret agency and must figure out who it is and who they can trust. The mole is working for a mysterious, evil race of aliens called The Hive, who is trying to take over the Earth.

The first three Men in Black movies were classics, they followed the same agents over the course of a few years and all connected together. This movie is a separate story altogether, following new characters and a new storyline. Although it does take place in the same universe, it barely recognizes the first three movies even existed. I really liked the first three films of this franchise, Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones were perfect together. The story was fantastic and the humor was on-point and hilarious. I had doubts as to whether this new cast could live up to the legendary agents Jay and Kay of the first three installments. This sequel felt a little needless and didn’t quite fit with the other films.

The cast themselves weren’t a problem in this movie. Tessa Thompson and Chris Hemsworth worked very well together. They had great chemistry and their humor worked very well off of each other. I do wish the characters were established a little better at the beginning of the movie. The audience wasn’t given much backstory on the characters and it felt like I was just dumped in the middle of a story already in progress. There wasn’t much character development throughout the film either. The characters didn’t really change much as the story progressed except at the very end of the movie.

This made the movie terribly predictable. I knew exactly who the mole in the Men in Black was as soon as he was shown on screen. The lack of character development also made the characters themselves very predictable. It was very clear how each character was going to react to certain situations, which took away from some of the humor in the movie.

Other than that, the movie was fairly entertaining. The visuals of the movie were a lot of fun. It really looked like the other Men in Black films. The weapons looked the same and the action scenes were fun to watch and exciting. The aliens were amusing to see and the humor generated from the aliens and their strange cultures was lighthearted and fun.

“Men in Black: International” is rated PG-13 for action, some language and suggestive material. This movie would be appropriate for almost everyone, except for small children. It would be a fine movie for a family night out or a movie to go see with a group of friends.

“Men in Black: International” is a very average, generic movie that is a needless sequel to a great series. It’s not horrible, but doesn’t fit in with the other films in the series. The characters are average and so is the writing. It earns 3 out of 5 stars.