MICKEY 17 is Korean writer-director Bong Joon Ho's much anticipated follow-up to his Oscar-winning political satire, PARASITE. Once again, his concerns are with economic inequality and political hypocrisy, and as with PARASITE, MICKEY 17 contains moments of trenchant laughter. But the mood here is lighter, zanier, looser, and altogether more.... gonzo than PARASITE. The political satire is broad and crude, the violence is ultra, but at heart this is a gorgeous love story and a plea for humanity.
Robert Pattinson continues to make astonishingly good career choices and stars as the eponymous Mickey. He's basically a harmless but feckless and aimless man in a near-future dystopia. On the run from mafia loansharks, abetted by his supposed best mate Timo (Steven Yeun), Mickey stupidly signs up to be an Expendable. He is basically an indentured slave to an exploitative space colonisation mission, put in harms way, killed again and again, and then just reprinted out. As the film opens, we are on the seventeenth iteration.
Joy of joys! Feckless Mickey somehow falls in love and lust with Naomie Ackie's kickass space-cop Nasha and she loves him back! In fact, I would read this film as a love story most of all. Improbable, hilarious, sexy, weird, but a love story nonetheless. But things get weird when Mickey 17 is somehow alive at the same time as his sassier, more mischievous reprint Mickey 18. And both set out to rise up against the kleptocratic rule of a character clearly based on Trump, with a Macchiavellian wife modelled on Imelda Marcos. Mark Ruffalo seems to be reprising his role in POOR THINGS here, but it's a no less fun turn for that. But the star of the show is clearly Pattinson. And the the Creepers. I won't say more for fear of spoiling the plot but I would pay a LOT of money for a plushy that looks like a baby creeper.
MICKEY 17 has a running time of 137 minutes and is rated R. It is on global release.
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