Director: Bong Joon-Ho Starring: Robert Pattinson, Naomi Ackie, Steven Yeun, Toni Collette, Mark Ruffalo Running Time: 137 minutes
After a troubled road to release, being ping ponged from month to month and year to year on the release calendar by WB, Bong Joon-Ho’s follow-up to his world-beating awards hit Parasite has fortuitously made its way to theatres on both the week of this year’s Academy Awards and the fifth anniversary of Director Bong’s triumph there. Having wrapped production in early 2023, it’s somewhat uncanny how much his 3rd English language feature Mickey 17, feels like a film of the present moment.
Adapted from Edward Ashton’s 2022 novel Mickey7, which seemingly held a less wasteful version of the same premise, Mickey 17 follows the 17th cloned iteration of down on his luck small business owner Mickey Barnes, played with plentiful neurosis by Robert Pattinson, who signed up for a colonial expedition to uncharted space to evade a violent loan shark on Earth. Unfortunately, due to Mickey’s total lack of marketable skills, he has signed up as part of the ‘Expendable’ programme, a trial run for human cloning as an “ethical” approach to early human trials in science experiments. To add yet more suffering to Mickey’s plate, the ship is run by Mark Ruffalo’s Kenneth Marshall, a disgraced, media-forward politician backed by a mysterious Christo-fascist corporation and filled with his cult-like supporters who deem Mickey to be less-than, divorced from his soul by the process. They also wear red hats.
If the rest of that was too subtle for you, don’t fret, Mark Ruffalo is doing what might be a more on the nose Trump voice than Sebastian Stan in The Apprentice for the film’s duration. This will doubtlessly be exhausting for many, but I was shocked by how on board I was as someone who flinches and runs away when I see a clip of an SNL current affairs bit on any of my timelines, though it is inherently a tough watch at the movies right now to sit down and be greeted by these caricatures of a vain despot and his snivelling technocrat backer (who is a shoo-in for Best Supporting Lip Piercing next year, for this pundit’s money).
At the film’s heart is a surprisingly tender romance between Mickey and Naomi Ackie’s Nasha, another non-believer in Marshall’s cause who stands up for and by Mickey through all his waivered away abuse. They have really smouldering chemistry that I didn’t expect at all going into the film, particularly a stand-out scene cross-cutting between the daily life on the miserable space frigate and their steamy lovemaking. Their equilibrium is all thrown off, of course, when our doting Mickey 17 comes home from a mission later than usual and finds he had been presumed dead, and a new Mickey 18 is in his bed. Pattinson was born for this double role, perfectly balancing out 17’s pathetic worminess with 18’s cynical cool-kid disregard for his own life (18 has huge shades of his Batman performance, he slips into the voice a couple times). Ackie does a great job as scene partner in these dual role scenes, managing to shift her performance from doting on the needy 17 to going along for the ride with the more devil may care 18.
The film is on a larger scale than many of Director Bong’s previous works, but don’t mistake this for a rollicking action movie. It’s refreshing to see a sci-fi film of this budget be as weird and sad as this, focusing on communication and person-to-person stakes rather than magical objects and the fate of worlds. The film thematically follows well run tracks for Director Bong, exploitation under capitalism and respect for nature, but they’re stated here as plainly as they’ve ever been. This is not a subtle film, and that’ll be tough for some in the audience, but its heart is so open that if you can lock into its sense of humour and Pattinson’s riotous dual role work, there is plenty of fun to be had with Mickey 17.
(4 / 5)