Men in Black: International

The Empty Suit

The main question hanging over *Men in Black: International* is not really whether it needed to be made. It is why it feels so insubstantial once it exists. F. Gary Gray’s 2019 attempt to revive a franchise that had already pushed its premise well past its useful life is not offensive, exactly. It is much blander than that. The movie just sort of dissipates as it plays, leaving behind the faint residue of studio strategy sessions and committee-approved decisions.



The film leans hard on the easy charisma of Chris Hemsworth and Tessa Thompson, who previously found real comic rhythm together in the messy fun of *Thor: Ragnarok*. Here they are Agent H and Agent M. M is the eager newcomer who spent her life hunting for the MIB after a childhood encounter; H is the once-golden operative whose shine has worn off. Hemsworth, who has spent years proving he is a much better physical comedian than his godly image first suggested, does what he can to make H’s smugness likable. But the script leaves him swinging at air. Thompson, usually so exact and alive on screen, gets stuck with a character whose whole identity is competence. There is no real spark between them, only a run of flimsy banter that sounds like the draft version of better jokes.



Gray knows how to stage action. *The Fate of the Furious* and *The Italian Job* make that plain enough. But the action here feels strangely hollow. There is a hover-bike chase through Marrakesh that ought to have some lift to it, and instead it turns into a blur of pricey digital clutter. The camera seems unsure what matters, and the audience ends up in the same place. The first *Men in Black*, for all its goofy 90s effects, had texture. The creatures felt slimy and physical. You believed in the mess of it. *International* trades that in for a smooth, glossy surface. Everything glows. Everything hums. None of it feels like it has weight.



The supporting players do not fare much better. Kumail Nanjiani voices Pawny, a tiny alien who swears loyalty to M. Nanjiani gets some mileage out of the part because he is funny, but Pawny still feels less like a character than a toy line waiting to happen. Emma Thompson and Liam Neeson step in, wear sharp suits, project authority, and hand out exposition with full professionalism, though you can almost picture them counting the minutes. The central mystery, involving a mole inside the organization, lands with almost no force at all.

By the end, *Men in Black: International* plays like a movie assembled to offend nobody and excite nobody, a product tuned for maximum global smoothness. It bounces from London to Paris to Marrakesh without ever feeling rooted anywhere. As a sequel, it somehow comes out smaller than the talent inside it: a polished shell drifting through an expensive, airless universe.