By Brontë H. Lacsamana, Reporter

Movie Review
Mickey 17
Directed by Bong Joon-ho

THE WORLD can be described as cruel and uncaring, viewing people as expendable and the optics of power and influence as more important than empathy and compassion.

This movie satirizes that to an insane degree.

Mickey 17 follows Mickey Barnes (played by Robert Pattinson), who finds himself with the most unusual job — dying horribly for a living and getting reprinted over and over again. He is basically a lab rat or guinea pig, something that was ethically contested but still came to exist in this futuristic society, as a space colony tries to put down roots in an alien planet to build a human settlement.

At the heart of it is Pattinson’s multifaceted performance as Mickey, who dies repeatedly and finds himself as the compassionate moral compass, always wracked with guilt, in a world living without it. His dual role as the kindhearted albeit slow Mickey 17 and the more volatile, impulsive, and even murderous Mickey 18, showcases his impressive range. The two, drastically different forms of his character come to be when the 18^th iteration is reprinted by the science team, believing that the 17^th has already died, and so the two must coexist even when it is forbidden. Pattinson bounces the two portrayals off of each other with ease, his already uncharacteristically high-pitched voice utilized in two different ways.

Parasite director Bong Joon-ho’s most obvious trademark in his English-language films are the cartoonish people of power representing the worst of humankind. There was Tilda Swinton as an outrageous figure of authority on both the Snowpiercer train and in the Okja corporation, and Jake Gyllenhaal in Okja as a disturbed spokesperson and TV personality. In Mickey 17 there is the tandem of Mark Ruffalo and Toni Collette as an egomaniacal couple with political influence.

Placed in a distant human settlement in space, Ruffalo and Collette as Mr. and Mrs. Kenneth Marshall ham it up big time, lording over the miserable group of people whom they’ve led into running a tight ship without compassion. Ruffalo in particular does something remarkable with his facial expressions and mannerisms, his jaw set into a permanent scowl that makes him the exact picture of a self-absorbed politician angling for a close-up, believing himself to be the savior of his people. It all pays off, the duo becoming the goofy, evil balance to the brief philosophical moments Mickey has and the heartfelt environmentalism (again, carrying over from Bong’s previous work) emerging even on an alien planet.

Naomi Ackie as Nasha is not to be overlooked. Playing Mickey’s love interest, she embodies the ferocious spunk and channeled the cleverness that he sorely lacks. Her badassery as a fighter, and sexual eagerness as a partner set her up to be just as abrasive as the rest of the crew, but she reveals a heart of gold that it turns out she and Mickey share (which also explains what she saw in him when he was first shown to be the biggest loser of them all). Steven Yeun as Timo, the toxic “best friend” who always either takes advantage of Mickey’s softness or leaves him behind, is appropriately the asshole of the century.

Fans of director Bong Joon-ho will notice that he tends to enjoy making riotous satires of the cruelty and carelessness of our times. As with his previous English-language films Snowpiercer and Okja, he does this through a sci-fi story that probes the ethics of making inhumane sacrifices for the survival of humanity. What sets Mickey 17 apart, though, is that the wackiness is turned up to dangerous levels. Almost too much, even.

Audience members who are more familiar with his 2019 Best Picture Oscar-winning Parasite and his more grounded Korean films may be shocked to behold this crazy corner of his filmography, but at their essence, a sort of hope amid the bleak is shared. Snowpiercer is more about class struggle while Okja is more about environmentalism — and Mickey 17 has both in spades! The initially scary creeper creatures that Mickey and Nasha encounter and later advocate for in the face of human cruelty are just as memorable as the cartoonish, uncaring people of power who seek to obliterate them for human needs.

Pattinson, Ruffalo, the digitally rendered creepers, and the rest of the cast may be good enough to carry the chaos, but this brand of sci-fi satire can quickly grow tired for some audiences. Bong Joon-ho runs a tight ship with his grounded work, and that’s more difficult to do with these wackier English-language ones. It may very well be his way of saying that Western and capitalist systems are deserving of more and more ridiculous satirical scrutiny as time goes by, and that it is all the more reason for us to lead with kindness and hope.

MTRCB Rating: R-16