You think you seen Bug-Eyed Monsters?
You ain't seen nothing yet.

"Men in Black 3” comes 15 years after the entertaining original and 10 years after the sequel laid an egg, and the surprise is, it’s better than the first one. Given the passage of time, the entire concept may be new to some audience members, but it still does service: There is a secret agency assigned to keeping track of all aliens on Earth, and there are as many of them as makeup expert Rick Baker can possibly devise. I am not sure how undercover an MiB agent can be when he dresses exactly like the Blues Brothers, but never mind, they get the job done.

The story until now: Veteran Agent K (Tommy Lee Jones) and his younger recruit Agent J (Will Smith) are under the supervision of Agent O (Emma Thompson) when there’s an emergency. The hideously ugly alien Boris the Animal (Jemaine Clement) has escaped from a maximum security prison on the moon. He is the last surviving member of his race, still angry because Agent K shot off one of his arms. His plan: Travel back in time and kill Agent K before that can happen.

An arm like his, you don’t want to lose. Its palm apparently serves as a condo for a nasty little insectoid creature that will leap and take chunks out of you. Indeed, Boris is one of those aliens whose entire body seems to contain openings from which unappetizing things can forage on its victims.

Time travel can become very complicated. To make it simple: Agent J (Will Smith, you remember) tries to travel back in time to prevent Boris the Animal from killing K. This results in a Young K existing in the same time period as J, who is the same age he started as, so the old man and the rookie are now contemporaries.

How this is achieved is the movie’s most impressive achievement. Young Agent K is played, not by Tommy Lee Jones in prosthetic makeup, but by Josh Brolin. The casting is spot-on. He looks like a young Tommy Lee Jones, and he sounds so uncannily like him that director Barry Sonnenfeld, hearing him, allegedly shed tears of relief. While watching the movie, I was convinced Jones dubbed his own voice. But remember Brolin was also a good sound-alike for George W. Bush in “W.”

Anyway, when Young K travels back to save Agent J, and not content to populate the film with countless gob-smacking aliens from Rick Baker’s fertile imagination, Sonnenfeld and his writer, Etan Cohen, also show a Hitchcockian flair for using iconic locations. For reasons I don’t understand, in order to return to the “present,” it’s necessary to fall from a very great height and push a button on a gizmo at the last second. This involves crawling out on one of those medieval-looking eagles atop the Chrysler Building, and the scene works even better because Brolin, with his hair slicked back, looks something like an all-American hero — Cary Grant, say.

A virtuoso final sequence takes place at Cape Kennedy on the day of the first moon landing attempt. Another gizmo must be placed on the moon to save humanity, and this involves a last-minute attempt to crawl out to the Apollo 11 pilot capsule, slap on the gizmo and escape using one of those chutes provided for the astronauts in case of an emergency. Since the first moon launch was telecast with many TV camera and scrutinized by countless binoculars, it seems unlikely this would have gone unnoticed. Maybe there’s a loophole — like if the attempt succeeds, it changes the future and turns out to be unnecessary. www.130q.com

Whatever. The movie gets comic relief from a sidekick character named Griffin (Michael Stuhlbarg), who wears a knitted Elmer Fudd hat and has the ability to see all the possible variations resulting from various events during time travel. “Uh, oh,” he’s always saying, “this is the one where …”

Let me say that although I liked the first “MiB” movie, I wasn’t particularly looking forward to this belated sequel. But I had fun. It has an ingenious plot, bizarre monsters, audacious cliff-hanging, and you know what? A closing scene that adds a new and sort of touching dimension to the characters of J and K.

《黑衣人》系列可能属于内种拖拖拉拉让人着急的系列电影，从横空出世票房口碑双赢影响全球时尚潮流跟阴谋论话题的诞生于1997年的第一集，再到踉踉跄跄二换编剧输了口碑遭人诟病票房小胜的第二集，直到今日的三部曲尾声，这一路的拍摄周期似乎有越拉越长成倍数递增的趋势。然而十几年的等待却是地地道道的情结养成，一路从后VHS录影带时代迎来VCD大爆发的迷影小子们，从没在大银幕上得以享受过黑超特警组为人们的带来的诸多乐子，以至于那些B级片范儿的外星怪形跟谐趣十足的动作场面只能一遍遍的在电脑跟高清电视中温习，哪个科幻宅不能随口说出关于黑超的段子，神马WORMGUY的插科打诨，各种武器道具载具的性能优势，客串嘉宾的名单都是乐此不疲的地道谈资。不过现在我们可以告别温故流传的苦逼等待，在拯救世界与穿越得瑟之间尽情的乐呵下去。
　　在赶上一个好年代的方面，《黑3》也许比前两集都要幸运。一来这个品牌已经有了地球人都知道的认知度，一老一少一黑一白的经典搭档也曾经是风靡全球的时尚文化ICON；二来傍上3D跟IMAX大普及，影片虽然也是由后期转制3D，但是在处理景深跟层次感上却效果不错，一些专门为3D视效所打造的段落基本都得到了绝佳的展示，而像高空坠楼的穿越戏这些也十分适合IMAX观看；三来拜服于近几年天朝各大字幕组的神译，中影此次制作的字幕也极为应景：地沟油，瘦肉精，唐宋诗词，“你丫穿越剧看多了吧”等这些与时下社会热点，网络文化十分贴合的翻译均一一跃上银幕，既不会让观影者觉得突兀生硬也做到了跟剧情以及角色的无缝对接。除此之外，本片更是搭上了近年来滥大街的穿越题材，虽然这并非多么新鲜的设定，但早在第二集上映的02年就由史密斯最先提出，只不过等到影片出炉上映，却也是十年后的事情了。跟第二集寻找K探员出山重归黑超局类似，本片还是以K探员的“消失”为线索推进，其最大的看点就在于穿越的年代-1969。至于这个年代在整个人类历史中有多么重要与别样，那你光是看看这些关键词也许就能窥见一斑：嬉皮，摇滚乐，波普艺术，安迪沃霍尔，阿波罗11号，文化爆炸等等。影片最大限度的还原了这一特殊时代，无论是服装建筑还是文化风潮，都被尽情的展示出来，并紧扣剧情需要融入到每一个环节中。像进入安迪沃霍尔派对的口令-JANIS JOPLIN（传奇嬉皮摇滚女歌星），前者的真实身份跟创作灵感，“地下丝绒”的背景音乐，对种族歧视的戏谑等。
　　说到搭档出演，其实本片中真正的对手戏是威尔史密斯同乔什布洛林。前者继续着嬉闹犯贱的嘴风，而后者则如老汤米附体，举手投足间都是活脱脱的K探员翻版。同上集糟糕的剧本相比，本集的故事则更为丰满多样，前后照应，线索多样。同时作为影片经久不衰的看点，外星人的造型跟种类再度升级，几乎令人应接不暇；而由于影片的主要场景都设定在1969年，所以黑超局那些先进装备也带上了那个年代所特有的特色-失忆棒，脉冲太空枪，飞行包，以及独创的环形高速摩托也都被赋予了怀古味道的未来主义色彩。全片的高潮基本分布在开场的监狱脱逃，穿越跳楼，鲍里斯追逐战以及最终的发射场对决。影片秉持了以往节奏快，入戏快，打斗快的高效率中，但同时却又使得很多线索的延展度不够，丧失了故事进一步发散并怪力乱神的好机会，不过这仍旧是一部基本无尿点的欢喜爆米花大作。
　　跟当年的《回到未来》《阿比阿弟大冒险》这样的传统美式穿越，以及我朝时刻不消停的成打清穿相比，《黑衣人3》可谓将穿越落到了实处-拯救世界，巩固友情。既有可以上升到人类存亡的宏大命题，也有私人化的感情演绎。真到了要用一句话证明你穿越过的时候，人家J探员脸上可比我们有光多了。
　　
　　彩蛋TIP：
　　
　　1， 开头中国餐馆的戏份有部分删减，具体可对照预告片。
　　2， Z老大葬礼时，站在J探员旁边的颅骨外露外星人由本系列电影造型设计-好莱坞传奇特效大师RICK BARKER客串。
　　3， 继迈克尔杰克逊等人的客串后，LADY GAGA也在本集中露面。
　　4， 影片沿袭了导演对于棒球的热爱，三部曲每集几乎都有跟棒球有关的段落。（特别是纽约大都会队。。。）
　　5， 阿波罗11号再度露面，由于影片的制作人之一是斯皮尔伯格，还记得去年的《变形金刚3》同样出现了阿波罗11号吗？斯皮尔伯格同是制作人。
　　6， 前两集中的黑超局领导Z老大在本集中已经去世，而前两集中内只八哥犬外星人似乎也已故去，请注意看J探员家里的壁画。
　　7， 结尾揭示了J探员的身世，以及与K探员的真实关系。