The fourth installment in the Men in Black film franchise first started with the release of the original in 1997 with Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones, Men in Black: International is an average entertaining summer blockbuster that is not as bad as critics have proclaimed and the strongest asset of the movie is the dynamic chemistry between the two protagonists. A spin-off of the original, the movie follows the young and new female Agent M, played by Tessa Thompson best known for her role in the Creed movies, who becomes a probationary agent after tenaciously trying to find the secret agency following an experience as a young girl. The head of the United States division Agent O, played by Oscar winner Emma Thompson, sends her on a mission to help her colleagues in the London division led by Agent T, played by Oscar nominee Liam Neeson. There, she is teamed up with the popular yet recently reckless Agent H, played by the charismatic Chris Hemsworth, to eventually track down an extremely powerful alien force that could destroy the world. The two agents who have a playful and entertaining rapport find themselves traveling throughout the world, including Marrakesh and Paris, to save humanity and all friendly alien races. They are later joined by a wisecracking small alien creature named Pawny, voiced by the funny comedian Kumail Nanjiani. Along the way, they discover that not everything at the agency is as it appears and several plot twists develop as a result. Like the other installments in the franchise, the movie does a good job of creating fantastical alien creatures that are not scary but rather funny and endearing and are terrifically captured by CGI that has vastly improved over the years since the original. Overall, I found it to be a good movie to pass the time that brings back good memories of the original film and is more entertaining than the critics would have you believe.
KEITH on Reels 