Mickey 17 - Review

Bong Joon-ho has made a career out of high-concept social science-fiction filmmaking, more often than not using these frameworks as a capitalist critique. In Snowpiercer, he used a train as a linear segregation to present class structure, in Okja, he made a film about farming and consumer culture, and in Parasite, a more typical drama film, he used a hilly urban landscape to show the rise and fall of the Kim family. It is his bread and butter. In Mickey 17 Bong creates a commentary on an expendable, overworked workforce in a typically high-concept fashion.

The film follows Mickey (Robert Pattinson), an expendable, reprintable guinea pig who takes on lethal, deadly tasks. Why is he doing this? We discover Mickey is on the run from a loan shark after his gamble on investing in the macaroon industry didn’t pay off. He is told by said loan shark, that he will track him to every corner of the planet. So Mickey decides to head off-world, as he gets on the last transport to the planetary colony, Niflheim. However, this comes at a cost, tickets are in high demand, so Mickey signs up to become an expendable, taking in dangerous toxins or placed in dangerous situations, all in the name of science. It doesn’t really matter anyway; he can just get reprinted again tomorrow with his data still intact – or at least that’s what every other character apart from Mickey thinks.

The film opens with Mickey stuck in a frozen crevasse; this is iteration number 17. He is stuck and the potential aid, Timo (Steven Yeun), refuses to collect him, as it is not worth taking a risk. Soon after, a species, later named ‘creepers’ finds him, and Mickey is presumed dead. However, days later Mickey arrives back to his bedroom, only to find another version of himself, Mickey 18, a dangerous discovery as multiples are seen as a deadly risk and their reveal would result in both their deaths.

Along for the ride is Nasha (Naomi Ackie), Mickey’s love interest who sees the bonkers allure of having two Mickeys, which she nicknames mild and habanero. The colony is helmed by Kenneth Marshall (Mark Ruffalo), a former congressman, who has lost two elections, but still has a cult following. An authoritarian leader in search of a greater future, a holy, pure land, with his devout followers sporting red baseball caps. A man who uses his power in every slightest misstep, cutting food by half, in what is a calorie rationed diet. His wife, Ylfa (Toni Collette), is Lady Macbeth-like, pulling the strings behind the scenes, obsessed with making new sauces out of the native species of Niflheim.

Mickey 17, has all the elements of a great Bong Joon-ho film. A great science-fiction allegory, it's visually stunning and has some great characters. It is absurdist and hilarious, but also melancholic and heartfelt. A film where the abrupt loss of a hand is both funny but undercut by a mournful score. However, where the film is let down is in its execution. The film is incredibly uneven and at times a slog to get through. Whereas Parasite was economical to a fault, this film feels indulgent in almost every way.

Yet, you can’t help but fall in love with much of what the film is trying to do. Mickey is a somewhat pathetic character, but someone we empathise with from his immediately apparent fear of death, despite his relative experience. However, perhaps, Bong should take a couple of lessons from his villainous politician when it comes to rationing a narrative indulgence.