By Jake Wilson
MICKEY 17 ★★★★
(M) 139 minutes
The moment Robert Pattinson opens his mouth as the hero of Bong Joon-ho’s science-fiction comedy Mickey 17, his voice is familiar, even if it’s hard to say exactly where you’ve heard his slurred delivery and wiseguy accent in the past.
While the setting is outer space, the vibe is close to a Depression-era boxing melodrama with a hint of Jerry Lewis – evoking terms like “chump”, “patsy” or possibly “palooka,” all of which apply.
Robert Pattinson in Mickey 17.
Mickey is what is known as an “expendable”: a kind of human crash-test dummy, useful to have on hand when you’re colonising a far-off planet populated by giant millipieds known as “creepers”.
As he cheerfully explains to us in voiceover, this means that whenever he’s killed in the line of duty, his overseers simply “print” a new version of him so he can keep on going where he left off.
Or that’s how he perceives it, though the film leaves little doubt that each new Mickey is a separate entity, while somewhat fudging the question of how it’s possible for each to retain the memories of his predecessor right up to the moment of death.
Volunteering for this position might not sound like the smartest move, but then Mickey never claimed to be the sharpest knife in the drawer. Besides, he was desperate to get off earth to escape the loan shark who’s pursuing him and his buddy (Steven Yeun) for the debt they owe following the failure of their macaroon business.
How much of this backstory appears in Edward Ashton’s original novel Mickey7 I don’t know, but it all feels like pure Bong, including the implicit metaphor. In all his incarnations, Mickey is nobody and he’s everybody – that is, everybody treated by society as if they were nothing more than an easily replaced machine part.
The broad, cartoonish approach is likewise in the vein of Bong’s previous English-language science-fiction films Snowpiercer and Okja, as opposed to his more grounded Korean films like the Oscar-winning Parasite.
Happily, Bong’s Oscar triumph has not diminished his compulsion to mock Americans as much as possible, here aided by Mark Ruffalo as the space colony’s Trump-like leader and Toni Collette as his domineering wife.
Pattinson has usually struck me, until now, as the kind of actor who tries too hard. But working in the stylised mode Bong demands, he manages for once to channel his natural awkwardness into the character he’s playing.
It helps that Pattinson also has his teen idol past to draw upon, since Mickey, despite everything, also has to function as a romantic lead, with a girlfriend (Naomi Ackie) who stays staunchly loyal to him (that is, to the successive versions of him).
Mickey 17 is a special treat for those like me who grew up loving late 20th-century sci-fi movies from Alien and Blade Runner to Total Recall and Starship Troopers – blockbusters, yes, but blockbusters with a healthy level of cynicism about human nature generally, and corporations and leaders in particular.
It hardly seems coincidental that all those films were directed by non-Americans, nor that the theme of cross-cultural communication looms large as Mickey 17 progresses (the handling of the “creepers” also owes something to Japan’s Hayao Miyazaki).
Ultimately, Mickey 17 is a bit softer than we’ve come to expect from Bong, to the point where questions might be asked about whether he and his backers (who include Warner Bros) were in full agreement about where the story should wind up.
But he remains something unusual, a humane satirist, capable of playing suffering and death for grim laughs without negating the idea that every life matters.
Mickey 17 is released in cinemas on March 6.
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