Mickey 17 is the latest film from the South Korean writer-director Bong Joon-ho, who won an Oscar for Parasite and made Snowpiercer and Okja. It’s a dystopian sci-fi satire starring Robert Pattinson twice over (all will be explained) but while it initially kicks some decent ideas around, it eventually descends into a cartoonish, sub-Armando Iannucci comic caper with, as far as I could ascertain, nothing fresh to say. It’s not the biggest disappointment I’ve had in my life but it’s up there.
The film is set some time in the future and Pattinson plays Mickey 17, a crew member on a space-colonisation mission who, in the opening sequence, has fallen into a deep crevice on the ice planet that is Niflheim. (I’ve always had my reservations about Niflheim; ask anybody.) He is about to freeze to death but Mickey is accustomed to dying. He is an ‘expendable’, a person who is awarded the most dangerous jobs because if he dies he’s immediately regenerated via 3D-printing technology with most of his memories intact. There have been 16 previous iterations and he’s weary of it now. But how can he quit? Which iteration even is the real Mickey? These are some of the ideas that ultimately go unexplored.
The first act is strangely uncinematic as it relies on Mickey telling his story via an exposition-laden voiceover, which I always consider cheating. His backstory emerges as this: on Earth, some years ago, he’d set up a macaron business that went bust which led to him being pursued by murderous loan sharks. (I have always had my reservations about the macaron business.)
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