“This must be my punishment,” narrates Mickey Barnes (Robert Pattinson), as he recalls the frog he tortured in a grade school science class. Mickey is a disposable worker on a 2050s colony mission to the distant planet Niflheim, and he’s used for all of its least enticing and most endangering tasks. Each time he dies, a new Mickey emerges from their human printer, ready for whatever grisly punishment might come next. This iteration is perched on the exterior of a spaceship, wasting away from radiation poisoning as he recounts his symptoms to a team of unscrupulous scientists. His hand is abruptly severed by a piece of errant machinery, and the appendage floats down the length of the freighter, arching past the heads of an indifferent crew inside. You’d think this morbid sight gag would undercut the so-called expendable’s suffering, but the scene is imbued with a dejected irony that goes hand-in-hand with the gravity of the situation.
This point where severity and sarcasm converge is where most of Bong Joon Ho’s work precariously resides. He’s made a career out of filtering social farce through populist genre frameworks and high-concept hooks, teasing the absurd from the mundane — and vice versa. His piteous characters are caught in the crosshairs of metaphor and specificity, dropped into recognizable riffs on reality where the pollution enabled by corrupt bureaucracy might manifest as a mutated monster, where penury might be relegated to the bowels of a mansion or the overcrowded caboose of a moving train, or — in the case of Bong’s latest, Mickey 17 — where the body of an exploited laborer might be cyclically recycled for endless use and abuse. Lifted from Edward Ashton’s novel Mickey7, the project’s premise is one of the filmmaker’s darkest, and Mickey one of his most abject sufferers. It follows, then, that Mickey 17 is also one of his least funny movies, though that isn’t exactly for lack of effort.
The film opens with Mickey’s friend Timo (Steven Yeun) leaving him behind in an ice cave to be eaten alive by Nifleheim’s croissant-shaped inhabitants. A how-did-I-get-here sequence gradually explains their departure from Earth, where Timo’s failed business venture indebted them to a sadistic loan shark. They fled his sphere of influence by joining the crew of Kenneth Marshall (Mark Ruffalo) — an oafish politician, disgraced by multiple election losses — who is ditching the planet to found a fiefdom of his own. Marshall bares his veneers like a frightened, posturing animal while his emboldening (and emasculating) better half, Ylfa (Toni Collette), clings to his shoulder, their very presence inspiring rowdy delight in a ship half-empty of zealous followers.
Mickey dies several times over the course of their four-year journey to Niflheim, but he also finds love, and illicit sex, with his crewmate Nasha (Naomi Ackie). The protracted, nearly hour-long flashback is energized by Bong’s reliable craft but enervated by a tendency toward repetitive caricature. The cruel realities of Mickey’s surroundings — where human decency is a luxury and casual cruelty is a reflex — are underlined so relentlessly that the film risks adopting the same callous position as the system it depicts.
Just when it starts to feel like we’re treading water, however, the plot thickens: the 17th Mickey is not eaten by the cave creatures on Niflheim, but deposited safely back on solid ground. Upon his return, he finds Mickey 18 freshly printed and determined to eliminate the competition (the presence of a “multiple” is a violation of the printing tech’s strictly upheld laws, punishable by death for all parties). 18 is a psychologically distinct entity, brash and forthright where 17 is boyish and deferential, with a healthy resentment of the raw deal that Mickeys 1–17 have been taking lying down. He’s just the shot in the arm that Bong and his protagonist need, and his disruptive presence brings Mickey 17 gasping back to life; two pressurized sequences of well-oiled mayhem — a steak dinner gone awry and a thwarted attempt on Marshall’s life — see Bong’s mastery of myriad moving parts on full display.
As the twin Pattinsons clash and connive, and the cartoon villains on the sidelines move toward center stage, something strange happens: kindness begins to enter the picture. Bong can always be relied upon to test the boiling point of his characters’ cold blood, and he knows just how cathartic it can be when his stupefied, apathetic bystanders are finally compelled to intervene. Politically speaking, Mickey 17 — which takes massive swings at incredibly easy targets — isn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer, but the fumbling humanity that shines through extracts a refreshing optimism from a cynical scenario that never really lets up on that prevailing sense of foolishness.
Mickey 17 may be bloated and ungainly, but it’s also a testament to how effectively this not-so-smooth operator can game the Hollywood system while keeping his distinctive imagination intact. Bong doesn’t always clear the high bar he set for himself with films like Snowpiercer (2013) and Parasite (2019), but mixed bags are simply part and parcel of a director whose adventurous spirit sends him chasing giddy thrills and nasty punchlines right off the face of the earth, rapt — and often baffled — audience in tow.
DIRECTOR: Bong Joon-ho; CAST: Robert Pattinson, Naomi Ackie, Steven Yeun, Mark Ruffalo; DISTRIBUTOR: Warner Bros. Pictures; IN THEATERS: March 7; RUNTIME: 2 hr. 17 min.
Comments are closed.