More than 40 years after he joined a government department charged with policing aliens on Earth, the past - or lack of it - is set to catch up with Agent K (Tommy Lee Jones). Notorious space criminal Boris the Animal (Jemaine Clement), a Boglodyte extra-terrestrial that K maimed and arrested in 1969, has just been released and, with the help of a time-jump mechanism, has leapt back to the 60s intent on killing K and saving his younger self from decades in a high-security alien prison.
In the present day, the success of Boris's murderous mission has had grave repercussions, and while everyone else in the Men in Black HQ now believes that K died four decades earlier, only his lively partner Agent J (Will Smith) has noticed the change. As soon as he figures out what has happened, he finds his own way through the space-time continuum to the Swinging Sixties, and begins an audacious mission to save the life of his friend.
This revival of a fun franchise thankfully regains most of the magic of the much-loved original. Smith and Jones are, respectively, as energetic and stoic as you'd expect, but it's Josh Brolin that stands out with his stunning on-point portrayal of a younger Agent K. The flat Texan drawl and deadpan expressions so uncannily replicate Tommy Lee Jones that audiences could almost be forgiven for wondering whether they are, like their characters, the same man just decades apart.
Men in Black 3 is a Film programme that first aired in 2012 and has been classified a PG certificate.
