REEL | Bong Joon-ho and Robert Pattinson Kill Off 'Mickey 17'

"It looks like a croissant dipped in sh*t!"

Warner Bros. Pictures / Plan B Entertainment

British heartthrob Robert Pattinson continues his string of offbeat roles directed by international auteurs as the eponymous "expendable" clone astronaut in Oscar-winning South Korean filmmaker Bong Joon-ho's sci-fi action-comedy Mickey 17. Based on Edward Ashton's ten-less comic novel Mickey7, all the interstellar Mickey workers are tasked with completing dangerous tasks on a spaceship headed towards a new alien-populated (called "creepers") planet to be colonized before being "reprinted" after each time (seventeen in total) he perishes, usually gruesomely.

Pattinson's many reprints are an obvious metaphor for humanity's failings on Earth concerning our recycling of dangerous political leadership, runaway government corruption, and the capitalist trappings of colonialism in a package reimagined as a less overtly patriotic Starship Troopers. Bong uses death as another cycle of our fleeting time alive and wasted efforts on propping up failing systems of control. In line with his previous futuristic English-language films, the dour Snowpiercer and imaginative Ojka, Mickey 17 expresses its searing political commentary blisteringly.

Alongside the two main Pattinsons, Naomi Ackie and Steven Yeun provide fun sidekick performances as Mickey's passionate soldier girlfriend and troublemaker friend. Everyone is hamming it up as feuding cogs in the larger space expedition machine with shady motives of advancing human society beyond its destructive capitalism at home. Both Mark Ruffalo and Toni Collette are also off the rails as thinly veiled fanatical Tr*mpian politicians desperately in pursuit of enforcing a twisted white supremacist vision of the perfect society off-Earth.

Pattinson goes for it in parallel dual roles of an abused dirtbag in love who tries to do the right thing after a life of trauma. Director Bong's insane science-fiction political narrative reach often exceeds the grasp told in a non-native language. Still, there are so many exhilarating, often excessive satirical elements that awkwardly comment on contemporary "America first"-style politics. Everyone's letting loose in this vision of humanity's few hopes for our collective future moving forward.


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