Following up an Oscar win is never easy, but when you sweep the Oscars and make history in the process, the pressure on you is so much more. Director Bong Joon-ho is no slouch, having made his name in Korean cinema before making his English language debut with Snowpiercer; the director is someone with a distinct style that melds black comedy, gross-out moments and biting political satire. It's no wonder that his socio-thriller Parasite cleaned up at the Academy Awards.
Mickey 17 sees director Bong on comfortable ground. In the future, Mickey (Robert Pattinson) is an expendable: a human who is repeatedly cloned so he can do the dangerous jobs on an off-world colony and die only to be re-printed. When he finds that he hasn't died after an encounter with the native creatures on planet Niflheim, he and his clone fight to be the true Mickey as a war between the colony and the aliens brews thanks to a disgraced politician (Mark Ruffalo).
This is clearly a film by a director with a vision. From the design of the spacecraft – run down, barely held together – we see echoes of Snowpiercer, while the native aliens feel like relatives of the monsters from The Host and Okja. There are all the class warfare elements that are prominent in director Bong's work too – though this does feel like a more watered down version to appeal to a western audience. The pot-shots at Trump – here embodied by Mark Ruffalo, never one not to make his political feelings known – are a little tame and obvious.
But the film survives on the strength of Bong's blackly comic style that is as thrilled by the class warfare as it is by shots of people eating or getting hit in the face. It's a film that is as gross as you'd expect from Bong and as funny. It helps that Robert Pattinson is an actor who thrives when a director has a strong style. He imbues the various Mickeys with their own personality. 17 is nervous and overwhelmed while 18 is much more confident and cruel. It's great to see him act against himself and still feel like you're watching two completely different characters.
The supporting cast are all fantastic. Ruffalo and Toni Collette are having fun as the head of the regime, playing dark-hearted evil with relish. But really the supporting performances that work best are Naomi Ackie as Mickey's love interest Nasha and Anamaria Vartolomei as Kai. Both of them make you believe that they could be interested in a nervous, nerdy loser Mickey.
As the film ramps up to its finale, there is more than one thread that comes colliding and it can feel like not all of the ideas are meshing. In a way this feels like it's Bong as his most free, able to make whatever film he wants after his Oscar sweep so he's made one that appeals solely to him and in a age where films are often dictated by boards and studio mandates, it's refreshing that there's a director making a film so quintessentially them.
Whatever Bong does next, it's clear that he's showing no signs of curtailing his interests and for a film about duplicates, there's not really anything like it around.
Mickey 17 is in cinemas from March 7th
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