Men in Black is a 1997 science-fiction action comedy directed by Barry Sonnenfeld and starring Tommy Lee Jones and Will Smith as two agents working for a secret organisation that monitors alien life on Earth. The film follows streetwise NYPD officer James Edwards as he is recruited into the Men in Black and becomes Agent J, partnering with the more experienced Agent K to stop an extraterrestrial threat before it reaches catastrophic proportions. What makes the film endure is the way it combines deadpan humour, fast-paced action and a very playful idea of New York as a city where the ordinary and the absurd exist side by side.
The film was shot primarily in and around New York City, with additional work in New Jersey and Los Angeles, and that urban setting is central to its identity. Some of the most recognisable New York locations include the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, used in the opening pursuit, MacDougal Street in Greenwich Village for Rosenberg’s jewellery shop, and Flushing Meadows–Corona Park in Queens, where the climax unfolds around the Unisphere and the New York State Pavilion observation towers. The Men in Black headquarters is associated with the Battery Park area at the entrance to the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel, while the city’s wider street network also appears in Manhattan and Queens, helping the film create a version of New York that feels both familiar and slightly surreal. Although the secret headquarters interior was created in Los Angeles, the film’s visual identity is rooted above all in its mix of museums, tunnels, downtown streets and huge public spaces across New York.
Guggenheim Museum
Guggenheim Museum appears in Men in Black, The International, Three Days of the Condor, Manhattan, Someone to Watch Over Me, and When in Rome.
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