Mickey 17
A group of people have signed up to go to space, escape Earth, and set up a new colony on a remote planet. Robert Pattinson has signed up as an ‘expendable’ - a guinea pig who goes out on dangerous missions, dies, but can be re-built again using a human 3D printer.
He goes out on a mission and they think he dies so they reprint him, but in fact he survives and makes it back to the base where he must now deal with the fact he has a clone of himself on board.
Bong Joon Ho clearly has a staunch (increasingly well warranted) dislike of capitalism and this shoots straight at President Musk, who is currently trying to put together a group to go to Mars. Mark Ruffalo plays the man in charge, with a scenery chewing performance borrowed slightly from Poor Things1 - it’s very funny and his wife, Toni Collette, is even funnier.
But the key role is Robert Pattinson who plays two different versions of the exact same person, not quite Jekyll and Hyde, but it is clear that something changes every time Mickey is brought back to life. He makes it look easy and it’s fun to watch.
The grimy sci-fi set design has a cobbled together look, which helps give it the air of something set in the near future, but also reminds me of old Doctor Who episodes. There’s cheap plastic tubing everywhere, a conveyor belt straight off an airport luggage scanner, even a very important house brick with some lights glued on. It’s a great choice that expresses the underlying sense of humour and feel of the film.
Perhaps I was tired but I didn’t quite connect with it emotionally. There was a good 30 minutes where it just lost me, and it struck me that there was a lot of frantic action and not a lot of moving forwards with the story. It swerves from quite funny to quite harrowing at times, but rather than feeling like black comedy it’s more just a confused tone.
I don’t want to give Mickey 17 too much of a hard time though. It’s not Bong Joon Ho’s finest work but it’s very good, and the more time and money that gets put into making original, oddball films the better.