Robert Pattinson stars in the latest from director Bong Joon (Parasite) Ho. It’s a wild and surprisingly touching Sci-Fi flick about an “expendable” named Mickey (Pattinson) who works for a big futuristic conglomerate. They send him on various dangerous missions and as he dies, they collect data for scientific research purposes. Once he’s dead, they just clone a new Mickey (the clone machine looks like a big inkjet printer, which is a nice touch) and send him out on his next mission.
One of the major themes in Ho’s work has been class inequality. With Mickey 17, he yet again provides some sharp commentary as Mickey is looked down on by nearly everyone who comes in contact with him. There are also themes about immigration and a few completely unsubtle jabs at the MAGA crowd.
Pattinson works overtime here, sometimes reaching Nicolas Cage levels of acting zaniness. He adopts an accent that almost sounds like Steve Buscemi with a mouthful of Novocain, and his body language and mannerisms are about as far from the Twilight movies as you can get. What’s terrific about his performance is that he endears himself to the audience right from the opening moments. Once we understand his plight, we are with him through thick and thin as most of our empathy for Mickey comes from seeing him used as a human guinea pig.
Mark Ruffalo gives another finely tweaked performance that ranks up there with his role in Poor Things in terms of brazen peculiarity. He is sneakily becoming one of our go-to guys for oddball supporting roles. Toni Collette is amusing as his wife, and Steve Yeun gets some laughs as Mickey’s former associate.
The film does lose a bit of its zing when Mickey realizes he’s a “multiple” and there’s another one of him running around. (The scene where his girlfriend tries to have a threesome with him notwithstanding.) Ho also has a habit of being a little on the nose when it comes to the points he’s making, but I guess you can do that in a Sci-Fi satire and get away with it.
I have to hand it to Ho for taking a big swing after winning the Oscar for Parasite, a small, personal indie and going to the opposite end of the spectrum with a big budget Sci-Fi movie but still keeping those same kinds of ideals intact. It’s the kind of crazy movie you can only make after you win an Oscar and Hollywood lets you do whatever the hell you want. The film runs maybe twenty minutes too long and has one or two unnecessary subplots, but again, if you win an Oscar, you’re allowed to indulge yourself a little bit. Since Mickey 17 was a big flop, I don’t know what Ho will do for an encore. One thing’s for sure; I will definitely check it out.
No comments:
Post a Comment