In 2019 I, like many others, was absolutely floored after unsuspectingly wandering into a cinema to watch Parasite. It was an arresting modern day allegory of power, class, and the struggle to climb the social ladder which spoke volumes to the culture at the time and is still relevant even today. This is where director Bong Joon-Ho’s story telling talent’s ultimately lie in his ability to attack a social construct through a thoroughly engaging and equally troubling tale. And again Joon-Ho has this in spades in Mickey 17 but it doesn’t quite hit the heights of his award winning, culture crushing 2019 behemoth. While it contains some of the narrative flair and social critique of director Joon-Ho’s 2019 work Parasite, the story of Mickey 17 requires a more pointed direction to match Pattinson's career defining performance. 

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Mickey Barnes and his friend Timo are financially destitute after a failed business venture, and on the run from a loan shark. Unable to pay their debts, the pair sign up as crew for a space ship that leaves Earth to colonize the planet Nilfheim — Timo as a pilot and Mickey as an "expendable". As an expendable, Mickey has signed up to die, both in mundane and extreme ways. After one iteration dies, a new body is printed with most of Mickey’s memories intact. 

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While the alien world of Mickey 17 feels familiar in the industrial-like production detailing of the spaceship they occupy, the design of the alien creatures are bizarrely beautiful. And this is the theme that runs throughout Mickey 17 from the character development to the production design itself; it's playing it all kinda straight with a slightly bizarre and goofy edge. 

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Which leads to a fun ride as Mickey 17 is thoroughly engaging throughout. But you can’t help but shake the feeling that a couple of sequences could have been trimmed here or that Joon-Ho could have been more narratively or thematically pointed there. The themes' razor sharp critique of colonization, worker exploitation, and the rise of authoritarian rule are all superb if not a little obvious with Mark Ruffalo’s politician Marshall spray tan, super white teeth, and red cap wearing supporters the most obvious of them all. 

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Since his Twilight years, Robert Pattinson has appeared in some particularly superb and varied roles in such films as The Lighthouse, The Rover, and The Batman. But this is his best performance yet completely disappearing behind an incredible accent and a fairly sweet natured but naive character in Mickey with a sublime subtly in all of the iterations.

While it contains some of the narrative flair and social critique of director Joon-Ho’s 2019 work Parasite, the story of Mickey 17 requires a more pointed direction to match Pattinson's career defining performance.

★★★.5