"Men In Black" (12) Savoy, Virgin, UCIs, Omniplex, Dublin
Its release hyped up by the snazziest, most enticing trailer for some time - and by a no-holds-barred advance marketing and merchandising campaign - Barry Sonnenfeld's Men In Black is, after four weeks on US release, poised to replace The Lost World as the box-office hit of the year. Good luck to it. In a summer when the Hollywood blockbusters have been long on wind and short on ideas, it is indeed a treat to find one which is actually entertaining, and - even more unusually - does not feel the need to overstay its welcome. Tempting as it is, one ought not overstate the virtues of Men In Black compared with dross such as Batman & Robin, in particular. But fun it is, wittily scripted and with a slew of eye-catching special effects; and all in a lean, trim 98 minutes.
The movie has its roots in a little-known comic-strip which has been smartly adapted for the movies by Ed Solomon, the writer of the two Bill And Ted films, a pair of underestimated romps in their own right. The abundant humour of Solomon's Men In Black screenplay is even more droll and surreal, and director Sonnenfeld wastes no time in attracting the viewer's interest. As Danny Elfman's zippy, catchy score kicks in on the soundtrack, the intriguing opening sequence follows the progress of a hapless bug flying from outer space into an American desert area near the border with Mexico. Police intercepting a lorry-load of illegal aliens - one of them from another planet - are thwarted by the timely arrival of two men in black wielding memory-erasing pens.
The men in black are Agent K (Tommy Lee Jones) and his ageing partner, D (Richard Hamilton), and they work for a super-secretive, unofficial US government agency set up in the 1950s to make contact with intergalactic refugees with no planet of their own. Most of them made their home in New York City - but of course - and the World's Fair was held there, we are told, as a cover for their landing!
The ostensibly mundane MiB headquarters features a tracking board with colour photographs of some prominent aliens, among them Sylvester Stallone and Newt Gingrinch, which explains a lot. When D decides to retire and K sets about recruiting a new partner, the very funny auditions are held in a bare room adorned only by a picture of LBJ - surely not another alien?
K opts for James Edwards (Will Smith), a hip NYPD officer with oodles of attitude. His new partner, renamed Agent J, undergoes a baptism by fire when he and K take on the case of an interstellar terrorist on a deadly mission. Soon the clock is ticking, as is de rigueur in such scenarios, and J and K have only minutes to save our planet from nothing less than annihilation. No bother to 'em.
Men In Black has been described as "Ghostbusters done by the Coen brothers". It also could be summarised aptly as The Man From UNCLE meets The X-Files with more than a few nods to Reservoir Dogs, The Blues Brothers and another Sixties TV series, I Spy. Unlike the flabby, mostly bland Ghostbusters and its forgettable sequel, Men in Black is a comedy driven as much by a clever, keenly sustained, off-beat sense of humour as it is by its profusion of expert special effects and animatrionics which are never allowed to dominate the picture. Admittedly, the slender storyline sags in the centre and some of the gags are just plain silly, but these are temporary lapses.
The influence of the Coen brothers is easily traced to director Sonnenfeld's part history as the lighting cameraman on the early Coen movies (Blood Simple, Raising Arizona, Miller's Crossing). Turning director in his own right, Sonnenfeld made The Ad- dams Family and its superior sequel, Addams Family Values, and last year, the Elmore Leonard adaptation, Get Shorty. For all its wit and effects, Men In Black would not be half the fun were it not for the inspired casting of the two leading roles. Oozing confidence, the deservedly fastrising Will Smith proves as adept at physical comedy as he is at delivering throwaway humour, and the usually intense Tommy Lee Jones lightens up for an immaculately dead-pan performance as the cool-as-ice, seen-it-all, more experienced agent - even when he's solemnly declaring that the best journalism on our planet is found in the trashy US supermarket tabloids with their hysterical cover stories about aliens and UFOs. Together Smith and Jones make a formidable double act. Making some impression in supporting roles are Vincent D'Onofrio as a redneck brute whose skin becomes the property of the intergalactic villain of the piece; Linda Fiorentino as a bright coroner who detects something very strange is going on; and Rip Torn as the MiB boss, Agent Z. Not to mention a very cute cat called Orion in a key role.
Expect at least one sequel to Men in Black.
"Addicted to Love" () Virgin, UCIs, Omniplex, Dublin
This is wire-service gobbeldygook which will be replaced tomorrow by 350 words of Michael's perfect prose. A Greek housewife who allegedly gunned down a priest she described as her "God on earth" was taken into custody today to await trial. "If it was possible for me to resurrect him with five kisses watered with the blood of my repentant heart, I would already have done so," said Katia Yannakopoulou after her pre-trial hearing in Athens.
The woman confessed to calmly pumping five bullets into the Most Rev. Anthimos Eleftheriades, a Greek Orthodox priest serving a parish in London, as he was climbing into his Range Rover on July 22. Yannakopoulou was arrested on July 24 as she pedalled around on a bicycle outside a monastery in an Athens suburb. She had managed to evade police during a nationwide hunt.
"I was living happily with my family when I met and later adored Anthimo," the 42-year-old woman said during her nine-hour hearing. "He had my trust as an apostle of God."
But their relationship soon changed from religious to romantic. "I loved him with passion," she said. Yannakopoulou told authorities she began making frequent, one-day trips to London after Eleftheriades took up his position there. She insists her husband and 18-year-old son were unaware of the relationship.
"The unseen victims of this issue are my husband and my child. If some teach love theoretically, there are few who practice it. And one of those is Giorgos Yannakopoulos," she said, referring to her spouse. The woman claimed to have given a total of 27.5 million drachmas (£61,000) to the priest during their five-year relationship. On one occasion, she said, Eleftheriades told her the Virgin Mary had visited him in a dream, telling him that Yannakopoulou would help him financially to build "a large ecclesiastical project" outside Athens.
The woman complied, contributing seven million drachmas (£15,600) of her savings, she said. Yannakopoulou has also provided the Athens prosecutor with several cassettes on which she taped her conversations with the priest after he apparently began ignoring her last September. No trial date has been set.
Hugh Linehan adds: "City Of Industry" (18) Screen at D'Olier Street, Dublin
Described in the publicity blurb as a "post-modern classic film noir" (but don't let that put you off), City Of Industry is actually a remarkably stylish and very violent revenge thriller which marks a return to form for director John Irvin after the dismal Irish "comedy", Widow's Peak. The city of the title is Los Angeles, and producer/screenwriter Ken Solarz sets this tale of dishonour among thieves against a backdrop of that city's industrial fringe, a grim and striking sprawl of oil refineries, cheap housing and freeways.
At first sight, the plot bears a remarkable similarity to Reservoir Dogs, centring as it does on a jewellery heist that goes wrong. That's particularly true for Harvey Keitel, who takes the familiar role of a veteran ordinary decent criminal who agrees to take part in a robbery organised by his younger brother (Timothy Hutton) with two other young crooks Stephen Dorff and Wade Dominguez). Unlike Tarantino's film, though, or the 1950s pulp thrillers like Stanley Kubrick's The Killers which it resembles at times, City Of Indus- try eschews flashbacks and time shifts in favour of a straightforward, simple narrative.
The plotting may be simple, but the devil is in the detail of Solarz and Irvin's compelling portrayal of ethnic gang rivalry and the workings of criminal society in Southern California. The performance are also fine, particularly those of Keitel and of Famke Janssen, who grabs the chance to prove she can really act after appearing as the sado-masochistic assassin in Goldeneye, while Hutton's too-brief performance makes one wonder why he hasn't been seen in more movies recently. The only weak spot is Dorff, whose James Dean complex is becoming rather tiresome. Despite that, City Of Industry is an unusually intelligent and well-textured thriller which holds the attention right to the its climax, which takes place in the same oil refinery where James Cagney met his end in White Heat.
