Mickey 17 (15)
Cast: Steven Yeun, Robert Pattinson, Naomi Ackie, Toni Collette, Mark RuffaloGenre: SciFi
Author(s): Bong Joon Ho
Director: Bong Joon Ho
Release Date: 07/03/2025
Running Time: 137mins
Country: S Korea/US
Year: 2025
Mickey Barnes signs up to be an expendable - a worker who agrees to be reprinted every time he perishes in service - on an interstellar mission masterminded by Kenneth Marshall and his sauce-obsessed wife Ylfa. When the 17th iteration of Mickey survives a close encounter with otherworldly creatures and manages to find his way back home, he comes face-to-face with his duplicate.
LondonNet Film Review
Mickey 17 (15) Film Review from LondonNet
Two Robert Pattinsons are marginally better than one in writer-director Bong Joon Ho’s madcap sci-fi fantasy adapted from the novel Mickey 7 by Edward Ashton. Set in a deranged, dystopian future when human lab rats can be printed in around 20 hours and uploaded with a donor’s core memories, Mickey 17 poses discomfiting and timely questions about the widening gulf between society’s haves and have-nots. This bleak mid-21st century fable unfolds under the aegis of a showboating fanatic played with scenery-chewing fervour by Mark Ruffalo, whose mannerisms and speech pattern strongly intimate a current resident of The White House. It’s heavy-handed mimicry that feels like an unnecessarily cheap shot at the current US administration…
Pattinson’s performances as myriad incarnations of hapless hero Mickey are beautifully calibrated. Digital trickery seamlessly unites these dumbfounded doppelgangers on screen, leading to some breathlessly staged and outlandish sequences including a snow-bound showdown with curiously cute woodlouse-like creatures dubbed “creepers”. Flashes of moribund humour such as one badly injured Mickey being tossed into an incinerator when he is still (barely) alive enliven long stretches that reduce pacing to a pedestrian crawl. The 137-minute running time is overly ambitious.
In 2054, down-on-his-luck small-time criminal Mickey Barnes (Pattinson) signs up to be an ‘expendable’ – a worker who agrees to be reprinted every time he perishes – to avoid a fatal beating at the hands of a violent loan shark. He flees Earth with friend and accomplice Timo (Steven Yeun) on an interstellar mission to the remote colony of Niflheim masterminded by Kenneth Marshall (Ruffalo) and his sauce-obsessed wife Ylfa (Toni Collette).
Earlier incarnations of Mickey are guinea pigs in scientific experiments to observe the effects of exposure to radiation, deadly airborne pathogens and early incarnations of a vaccine that causes Mickey to cough up blood. The only glimmer of light in each Mickey’s bleak (and brief) existence is a love affair with Niflheim security officer Nasha (Naomi Ackie).
The 17th iteration of Mickey is presumed dead after a close encounter with otherworldly creatures on the planet’s surface. In fact, creepers save Mickey from a grim fate and when he arrives back at base, he comes face-to-face with his reprinted self. The 18th Mickey is determined to enjoy his brief existence with Nasha and declares war on his predecessor as an ice storm gathers outside the colony’s base.
Mickey 17 lacks the consistent satirical bite and subtleties of Joon Ho’s previous film, the deliciously cruel Oscar-winning comedy Parasite, and harks back to his monster-mashing escapades in Okja and The Host. Production design is wondrous and death becomes Pattinson but Ruffalo and Collette are poorly served by a script that juxtaposes moments of brilliance with patience-sapping longueurs. In space, everyone will hear a sporadic stifled yawn.
– Jo Planter
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