Review: MICKEY 17

Mickey falls into a crevasse while on a mission for his colony and can't believe he's still alive after the fall. It's the future and he volunteered to become an Expendable in the interstellar expedition led by a populist politician. What that means is that he gets to be tested for anything injurious or lethal like exposure to space or newly discovered viruses. If he dies he gets reprinted with all his memories. The one we meet is the seventeenth iteration, Mickey 17. When he survives the situation, enough time has passed to assume his death and a new Mickey has been printed. Unlike his nerdy awkward self, this one is aggressive and forthright, claiming 17's life and girlfriend. But Mickey 17 is haunted by how he survived and what the strange local creatures are that almost consumed him.

Bong Joon Ho's epic length sci-fi satire dives deep and long but, as usual, brings everything home and then some. There is a lot of plot to deal with and the political examination of the microcosm on the ship gives opportunity for some banging jibes at demagogues and the lower depths of human curiosity. Also characteristic is the immersive world building on screen. That said, it could lose almost an hour of runtime before anyone would notice.

Because the third act and coda are so engaging, it's easy to let slip the disproportionately massive beginning and middle which runs so much repetition that it can feel like a loop. Scenes that should whiz by feel agonisingly elongated. This is an enemy to the comedic side of things and a lot of the setups feel exhausted by the punchline. With all that you wouldn't expect so very much expository narration but you do get a lot of it. There are passages of this film where you just wish you could hit fast forward. Bong does like to loosen his belt when making his features but something like Parasite plugs so much in without it ever feeling laboured or slow. He just let this one go on.

This is a pity because this superb cast which includes Robert Pattinson in dual roles, Mark Ruffalo in high bombast, Toni Collette in bizarre one-percenter sleaze mode, Naomi Ackie enjoying an action role, and Steven Yuen being everyone's slippery ne'er do well, is a corker of an ensemble. But you could also make a cast of the themes from colonisation, economic oppression, political populism, science minus ethics, fragile tenets regarding civilisation, unethical cuisine, and the overall oafish devastation that humans are so given to. The stretched canvas can at times allow breathing room for all of these but it's when the stakes clarify the conflict  in the finale that we really feel as though we find the depth.

Bong is a contemporary master of cinema and has given his audiences many hours of thought-provoking enjoyment. While this must rank among his best, I can't help feeling for the tightness of Host, the heartrending intrigue of Mother, the thrill of Snowpiercer and so on. I just wish that, along with Luca Guadagnino and Coralie Fargeat, someone would in kindly fashion shake him out of these interminable screen times. If this had been a lean ninety minutes it would be a pop out instant classic instead of the new film from the old master. That said, you really could do a lot worse than this at the moment.