Mickey 17 review: Parasite director Bong Joon-ho returns with Robert Pattinson in the weirdest film this winter

The Korean auteur's third English-language feature is a bonkers sci-fi tale that has Robert Pattinson seeing double

Warner Bros

★★★★☆

Mickey 17 is in cinemas from 7 March. Add it to your watchlist

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How do you follow a film like Parasite? If you’re Korean maestro Bong Joon-ho, then you commandeer one of the biggest stars in the world and take on the strangest sci-fi out there.

Mickey 17 sees Robert Pattinson play an "expendable". No, not one of those muscle-bound, ageing action stars from that Sylvester Stallone franchise, but a human who has signed his life away to aid man’s interstellar progress. If he dies, no matter; he can be "re-printed", or cloned, back into existence, using his DNA and memories stored, quite literally, on a brick-shaped hard-drive.

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Playing out of competition at the Berlin Film Festival, Mickey 17 is far removed from Bong’s beloved Parasite, the 2019 film that won the Palme d’Or in Cannes before claiming the Oscar for Best Picture. Adapted from Edward Ashton’s cult novel Mickey7, it’s closer, in genre at least, to 2013’s Snowpiercer, the director’s post-apocalyptic drama set on a perpetually in-motion train. But Mickey 17 is funnier and more twisted, dealing with the ethics of cloning in a unique and entertaining way. Or as Mickey’s handler says, “From now on you better get used to dying – this is your job.”

When the film starts, in AD 2054, Pattinson’s Mickey Barnes is now Mickey 17 – the seventeenth incarnation. Earlier Mickeys have died in various ways, including from a virus that threatened the inhabitants of a spaceship on a four-and-a-half-year journey to an icy planet called Niflheim. Leading the expedition is a smarmy congressman, the bouffant-haired Kenneth Marshall (Mark Ruffalo), together with his wife Yifa (Toni Collette), self-satisfied politicos who both appear to have zero concern for the life of these "expendables". Problems arise, however, when Mickey 17 survives a fall into a crevasse on the ice planet.

Mickey 17 still showing Robert Pattinson in an MRI-style machine

Mickey 17. Warner Bros

By rights, he should’ve been gobbled up by the alien bugs, or "creepers", that are native to Niflheim, but instead they gently save him. When he returns to the ship, he finds Mickey 18 has already been created. Multiples are banned, on pain of death, suddenly making their position very precarious indeed. Plus Mickey 17 is far more passive than his more aggressive successor, making it a story about survival of the fittest.

Unquestionably, Mickey 17 is the weirdest film this winter. Comedian Tim Key (Sidekick Simon in This Time With Alan Partridge) can be seen inexplicably strutting around in a pigeon costume. Thomas Turgoose, of This Is England fame, gets to shoot a bazooka at the weird alien creepers. And Naomi Ackie, who plays Mickey’s lover Nasha, enjoys a threesome with Robert Pattinson… and Robert Pattinson.

She also gets one f-bomb-loaded speech that caused the audience I watched the film with to burst into spontaneous applause.

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Of course, it’s Pattinson who deserves the most acclaim, though. The former Twilight star has always demonstrated eclectic tastes. Think of films like The Lighthouse or his earlier sci-fi, High Life, made by Claire Denis. And again, he’s let off the leash in a role that requires impressive physical dexterity, as well as playing double. While the film does lose steam a little in its final third (at 137 minutes, it definitely could’ve been trimmed), the farcical nature of the story never lets up. In these times of cookie-cutter Marvel and DC superhero films, it’s refreshing to see a futurist parable that is both daft and, underneath, provocative. True, it doesn’t touch the emotionally devastating conclusion that Parasite brought, but it’d be almost impossible to match that masterpiece.

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Instead, it’s Bong in more playful mode, tantalising us with black humour and a double dose of Robert Pattinson. Now that has to be worth a watch.

Authors

James Mottram

James Mottram is a London-based film critic, journalist, and author.

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