Bong Joon Ho’s Mickey 17 whatever you want it to be. An eco-fable about survival through colonisation. A satire about demagogues blinded by ambition. An allegory about brutal workplace culture. A philosophical treatise on doubling.
The comic-book flavour makes light of weighty ideas, nimbly darting between genres while also serving itself up as a love story.
The South Korean wunderkind’s third English-language feature is an adaptation of Edward Ashton’s science-fiction novel Mickey7.
Sometime in the future, Marshall, his wife Ylfa and his followers leave resource-strapped Earth for the planet Nilfheim. Conditions are harsh on Nilfheim. Its only inhabitants are Doctor Who-like creatures known as creepers.
Marshall orders a series of experiments on possible survival techniques by using a human cloning technology. The lone subject: Mickey (Robert Pattinson), who has failed to read the fine print of his work contract.
Mickey dies. Mickey is reborn. Mickey dies again. Mickey is reborn again. There have been 16 iterations of this “Expendable”, who is disposed of once he serves his purpose and then resurrected. The 17th Mickey is presumed dead too, but he lives on.
Mickey and security agent Nasha (Naomi Ackie) have as much of a hot-and-heavy relationship as permissible in a film that prefers to be naughty, rather than provocative. Bong’s end-of-the-world vision does not have the alarmism or despair typical of tech dystopic scenarios. Mickey 17 has Bong’s trademarks – absurdist humour, complex choreography of action, precisely guided scattershot storytelling and political bite.
The sudden tonal shifts – another Bong trademark – place the film anywhere between Dr Strangelove and Bong’s own Okja. The larval creepers in Mickey 17 owe a debt to the Ohms from Hayao Miyazaki’s Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind.
Goofiness and tenderness course through Mickey 17. Marshall’s twisted Utopia is riddled with holes and leaks, allowing rebellion and disagreement to fester.
It is hard to be frightened by Marshall, whom Mark Ruffalo hilariously plays like a Trumpian cultist with impossibly white teeth, or his wife Ylfa (Toni Collette), who’s the power behind the throne. It is equally hard to miss the film’s political commentary on a future that is not too different from the present.
The mordant humour gives Robert Pattinson an excellent showcase for his comic skills. Pattinson is superb as the dim-witted Mickey 17, who is trapped in a Sisyphean loop, as well as the edgier Mickey 18. Pattinson’s workload is somewhat increased by the dull dialogue, which belongs to a typical exposition-heavy Hollywood product rather than a shapeshifting movie like this one.
The film’s immersive visual schema amply compensates for the poor writing. If there’s an overriding message in Bong’s deftly directed romp, it is that humans will and must survive, however daft their behaviour.
