Robert Pattinson and Robert Pattinson star in Mickey 17, a new political satire from legendary Korean director Bong Joon-ho. Most recently, Bong took home a few Oscars for his widely recognized work in the 2019 film Parasite. That film was so spectacular that following that up is no easy task.
Does Mickey 17 live up to these expectations? Well, not exactly. But even if this isn’t his best work, it’s still got a lot to say, and there’s a sincerity behind it that speaks perfectly to today’s political climate, even if the movie wasn’t exactly meant to at the time it was written.
Bong adapts Edward Ashton’s book Mickey7 into a charming film filled with personality, though it has a few flaws. He assembles quite a stellar cast, with the big-ticket item here being Robert Pattinson. Pattinson has played American characters before, from Edward Cullen in Twilight to Connie Nikas in Good Time to Bruce Wayne in The Batman.
But if you think for a second that you know what Pattinson’s going to sound like in this film because you’ve seen his other movies, you’re mistaken. Not only does Pattinson change his accent, but his voice is really different here. He has mentioned pulling inspiration from Jim Carrey in Dumb and Dumber and Johnny Knoxville and Steve-O from Jackass. You can kind of tell; it’s remarkable.
A signature of Bong’s work is his dark sense of humor, and he retains that here. There’s something so funny about this protagonist who’s completely expendable in the eyes of nearly everyone. The supporting characters feel no qualms about tearing him apart, sending him out to do dangerous things as a sacrificial pawn in their experiments. Once he dies, they can replicate him easily. 16 iterations of Mickey have died up to this point, leading to the Mickey we follow during the film: Mickey 17.
The first half hour is where the movie struggles a bit. There’s a lot of narration in the opening act, which is all designed to provide exposition and give audiences context on the world and how Mickey got to where he is now. Occasionally, the narration works as a punchline in a joke, but mostly, the narration simply states what we’re already seeing on screen. There are many ways of showing information to the audience that are way more interesting than having Mickey narrate it to us. It would be better if it were intermittent, but nearly every single scene for the first half hour has Mickey explaining what we’re seeing on screen via voiceover.
Fortunately, the second and third acts pull back the narration a bit and allow the story to take shape a bit more. We’re introduced to a colorful group of memorable characters, all being played by talented performers. Despite often playing good guys, Mark Ruffalo plays a villain for his second movie in a row after Poor Things. But while his Poor Things character is more of a pathetic, insecure, toxic masculine figure, his character in Mickey 17, Kenneth Marshall, is an egomaniacal politician. Although he’s very much a caricature, he inhibits traits not unlike those found in people in power today.
Ruffalo is having a blast in this role. He’s got this perfect set of teeth in this movie, and his utter lack of human empathy makes him fascinating to watch. Chewing the scenery alongside him is Toni Collette as his equally horrible wife. She must match his crazy at every turn, and she does so marvelously. One of the lesser supporting characters is Nasha Barridge, a security agent played by Naomi Ackie. She’s competent at her job, but she’s not very interesting on the page. The romance that starts between Mickey and Nasha simply consists of them seeing each other across a room, and then we cut to them having sex. There isn’t much depth or chemistry they share.
Steven Yeun appears in the film as Timo, Mickey’s childhood friend who serves as part of the reason they’ve ended up in this sticky situation. Unfortunately, my issue with Yeun’s role in Mickey 17 is very similar to my issue with Yeun’s role in the 2022 movie Nope: he’s unimportant to the story. Much like in Nope, Yeun’s storyline lightly touches the main storyline but could be taken out entirely, and the main narrative would have remained the same. While it’s wonderful that Yeun gets high-profile roles with talented directors, his characters don’t seem to contribute enough.
Another character who could have been taken out is Anamaria Vartolomei’s character, Kai Katz. While Vartolomei gives a good performance, the movie spends way too much time on Kai early on only to have her fade into the background in the film’s latter half. The narrative can also be inconsistent as we spend a lot of time moving the pieces into place, and the characters’ goals and priorities change drastically every few minutes.
But once Mickey 17 finds its footing in the second half, the movie improves significantly. It’s fun to see Pattinson in dual roles because he plays them both so differently. Ackie’s performance is fun, and the latter half is where the movie finally settles on what it’s about: colonialism. It’s an allegory for how people in power treat those whom they deem as lesser, and people of many political leanings can find parallels between that and their own beliefs. Once we arrive here, the story remains pretty simple, and these characters become very fun to watch, especially in this sci-fi setting that feels so distinct. This movie is very different from Parasite, often echoing more of Bong’s other films like Snowpiercer and Okja. He’s swinging for the fences and having a blast with this movie, and I’ve got to give it to him for that, even if Mickey 17 isn’t the best we’ve seen from the esteemed filmmaker.
SCORE: 6/10
As ComingSoon’s review policy explains, a score of 6 equates to “Decent.” It fails to reach its full potential and is a run-of-the-mill experience.
Disclosure: ComingSoon attended a press screening for our Mickey 17 review.
