Mickey Barnes, an “expendable” employee, is sent on a human expedition to colonize the ice world Niflheim. After one iteration dies, a new body is regenerated with most of his memories intact....
Essentially a megamix, greatest hits compilation of Bong Joon-ho’s most familiar and esteemed tropes, themes, and theatrics, “Mickey 17” nevertheless aspires to be a flexibly astute, if not loosely scathing indictment of the machinations behind our own destruction. Yet, it only achieves roughly three-fifths of that potential.
Bong Joon-ho’s style continues to be a steady inclining escalator of eclectically absurd pathos and playful visual storytelling. Essentially a master behind proving methods to the madness, he unfortunately is little murky in his vision here, feeling less intrusive the more chaotic he looks to go; thankfully, he makes sure to operate a sense of optimism against the tides of self-destruction that still feels very distinctive to him.
I get the significance behind Fiona Crombie’s future noir-esque production design: imposing in scope and scale with the monochromatic color palette to where every tone, hint and shade of blue, gray, white and orange gives an overly spacious vastness to the unwieldy bleakness that still feels restrictive and intentionally weightless. Lots of visual echos to Alien are picked out and the industrial clutter we’re surrounded with isn’t meant to be memorable but the dystopian setting is still there, siphoning enough mileage out this delirious space oddity.
The in-media-res structure does help feed into the snooty satirical nature of its gritty sci-fi trappings, if only just. Staples of his style of cinematography remain in flourish: the subtle push-ins, horizontal tracking, and top-down angles with stellar ensemble staging but it remains purposeful in its playfulness and calculated framing with mostly stable editing that makes up for the few abrupt transitions. Costumes are simple but effective, I can’t say I recall much of Jung Jae-il’s restrained orchestral bombast score, no hiccups were spotted in the VFX department, sublimely mixing practical and CGI effects and for how frustratingly uneven the jarring tonal shifts can be, you cannot convince me the gallows humor doesn’t have this ugly, nihilistic charm that matches that gloomy mirth on a stable wavelength.
As someone who’s often topsy-turvy on gallows humor, this was acceptable.
Nothing amuses me more than seeing a cast fully onboard with a project’s intentions and tone and going all out to match that energy. In some shape or form, everyone is taking a bite out the satirical Apple in rather broad strokes but Robert Pattinson is constantly getting seconds; he continues to prove why he’s one of the greatest actors of this generation in one of his more physically demanding yet nuanced roles.
Not all the characters have as much range or layers as his but the distinctly oddball, cornball dialogue gets some traction going.
So elephant in the room: nothing about this story’s original. Imagine a bleak dark comedic version of “Moon” with the full-throttle-eat-the-rich messaging of “Snowpiercer”, the gonzo-goofiness of “Okja” and the initial concept of “Groundhog Day” through a body-horror lens. And even after the plot twist we all know is coming, it follows a rather predictable predetermined series of events often held back by a lot of bloat and excess and they don’t come off organically as Bong probably intended. To offset that, it ups the Monty Python silliness without much finesse to varying degrees, hanging on an otherwise solid premise that doesn’t capture the same scope the production design gives it while barely fastening its pieces in place with bubblegum.
This one continues the trend of his movies offering a damning rebuke of the social order and the greedy 50 foot wall of capitalism everybody blindly keeps jumping into, only this time with subtly unsubtle jabs at American politics and entitlement as well as highlighting the consequences of unchecked ambition. Sure, this movie approaches said topics within the grey area as opposed to Memories of Murder approaching the topic subtly through the humorous farce of law and order or Parasite facing the topic head on with brutal expressionism but it still directly rips the bandage off rather violently, still making the most out of the premise despite not addressing all the issues it brings onboard. The ethical, philosophical and even religious implications are hinted at but it doesn’t get too bogged down with what a soul can be and what it means to live.
But you know what I found the biggest themes to be? Cynicism vs Dignity. In a way, we can be slaves to both the sum of our choices and what we represent: regardless of class or status, we ethically are doomed to repeat the mistakes and vanities of who came before us either out of fear or to leech power off of someone else……and one little shred of defiance, somebody recognizing their self-worth is all that it takes for the facade to crumble. Yet another movie experience immediately made all the more poignant, relevant and disheartening due to the cheerleading battering ram carnage already plaguing Trump’s second term.
And yet, for all the good going for it, there’s always those one or two stubborn springs that just won’t go in place. The blatant lack of characterization for the supporting cast grows irksome pretty quickly, over-emphasis of voiceover narration is often a pretty lazy use of tell, not show and again, the movie’s insistence on unrelented excess. It loses control over its gluttony of subplots pretty quickly, reducing rather spicy material like animal rights, environmentalism and the enjoyment of rare delicacies slathered in the blood of innocents to background noise and while I speak no ill will towards the films structure, this numbing sense of atrophy stings from the movie’s middle section all the way to the ending.
Having so much going on that it’s hard to keep track of everything is bad enough but the lack of momentum to keep the pacing grounded? That’s another thing. Warner Bros always has to screw something up, don’t they?
Still, I guess this isn’t a bad watch. Just don’t go in expecting another “Parasite”.
