Mickey 17, known as an “expendable,” goes on a dangerous journey to colonize an ice planet.

It’s taken Bong Joon Ho 6 years to return with a new movie after his Oscar winning success with ‘Parasite’, and that movie is ‘Mickey 17’, a science fiction black comedy starring Robert Pattinson in well, I guess, multiple roles. He is the ‘Mickey 17’ of the title, so named because he is the 17^th iteration of Mickey Barnes, a slightly dim man who decides to join a space colony as an ‘Expendable’ in order to escape from a murderous loan shark on Earth. An ‘Expendable’ is a worker who is cloned every time they die, which happens quite a lot given their primary role is to be used for research purposes. You may be thinking this sounds like ‘Moon’, Duncan Jones existential sci-fi movie with Sam Rockwell, and yes, the basic premise is quite similar, but where ‘Moon’ was complex and serious, ‘Mickey 17’ is kind of overblown and silly, but not without its pleasures. If I was to play the lazy comparison game I’d say it was something like ‘Moon’ meets ‘Brazil’, the madcap Terry Gilliam 80s movie that stars Robert DeNiro as a space plumber.

‘Mickey 17’ begins by depicting the myriad ways in which the previous Mickeys have met their demise, in order to take us up to number 17, as he is about to die having been left behind by his friend (Steven Yeun) to his fate at the hands of a colony of mysterious monsters. Only these ‘monsters’ don’t kill Mickey, and he’s able to return to the base camp. That is where the problems begin as everyone assumed he was dead, and a new Mickey (Mickey 18) has already been ‘printed’, creating a problem as this would be a multiple violation. The new Mickey is far snarkier and more confident than Mickey 17 (we learn they all have different personality quirks), and after initially fighting with each other, they realise there’s a common enemy that warrants their attention.

That common enemy is Mark Ruffalo’s failed politician Kenneth Marshall, who he is playing as an almost too on the nose pastiche of Donald Trump, alongside his slyly evil and devious wife Ylfa (Toni Collette). They have sinister ambitions for the colony, and it falls upon the Mickeys, alongside love interest Nasha (Naomi Ackie), to stop them, and that leads to the second half of the movie taking on an altogether different tone. Those coming into this expecting ‘Parasite’ will be disappointed as this is far more like Bong’s previous film in ‘Okja’, and it’s throw a lot at the screen and see what sticks approach does lend to a slightly ramshackle viewing experience.

Of its positives you have to start with the performances and you have to start with Robert Pattinson. Like his fellow ‘Twilight’ lead Kristen Stewart, he has long since moved on to varied and interesting work and he is terrific here, making the two prominent Mickey’s their own characters and balancing comedy, drama and on occasions surrealism majestically. He’s well matched by Naomi Ackie who is equally good, and as for Ruffalo and Collette, they’re having a ball even if it sometimes feels like each actor is performing in an entirely different movie.

There’s too much going on in ‘Mickey 17’ for this to be a wholly satisfying experience and the sharper points it attempts to make are blunted as a result, but if you take it for what it is as a silly, cartoonish sci-fi romp then it is pretty good fun, if a little long.

Rating: 3/5

Directed By: Bong Joon Ho

Starring: Robert Pattinson, Naomi Ackie, Mark Ruffalo, Toni Collette, Steven Yeun, Patsy Ferran, Cameron Brittan, Holliday Grainger, Thomas Turgoose, Daniel Henshall, Anamaria Vartolomei, Tim Key and Steve Park

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt12299608/