Mickey 17 review: Parasite director’s frantic follow-up is an anti-fascist farce

Mickey 17 is a riveting sci-fi thriller wrapped up in heavy-handed allegory, an off-kilter tone and a rambling script in desperate need of de-cluttering.

While the latest offering from Oscar-winning South Korean director Bong Joon-ho will be at the top of most cinephiles’ anticipated films of 2025 list, his long-awaited (six years, to be precise) follow-up to 2019’s masterful thriller Parasite sadly falls short of the filmmaker’s lofty benchmark.

Robert Pattinson stars as Mickey Barnes, a desperate man on the run from debt collectors who signs up for a mission to colonise the planet Nilfheim along with his friend Timo (played by Steven Yeun).

Willing to do anything to escape his past, Mickey agrees to undergo treatment to become an ‘Expendable’, given dangerous assignments and a freshly printed body every time he dies using advanced technology that has been outlawed on Earth.

Here, Bong masterfully turns his critical eye to the way capitalism exploits its ‘lower-class’ citizens as each new Mickey becomes something less-than human, mistreated and abused by everyone onboard, save for his love interest Nasha Barridge (Naomi Ackie).

When a mix-up causes a new Mickey to be printed prematurely, the 17th and 18th versions of himself must learn to work together to prevent disaster and escape the tyranny of the expedition’s leader, the narcissistic politician Kenneth Marshall (Mark Ruffalo).

There are certainly echoes of Bong’s first American film, the anti-capitalist science-fiction thriller Snowpiercer, which extended its inequality metaphor quite literally into an allegorical, post-apocalyptic train that kept its subjugated citizens starved while premium passengers lived it up in the front carriages.

Unfortunately, with its rather confused script and obvious real-life parallels, Mickey 17 is too in danger of buckling under its own weight to truly call it another masterpiece.

Giving credit where it’s due, Ruffalo is having enormous fun as the most clatteringly obvious allegory since Back to the Future: Part II’s Biff Tannen, who was quite literally given a fuzzy wig and his own casino. Four decades later, and the current president’s influence is eerily observed, along with the creeping infiltration of white supremacy and cults of personality into mainstream political discourse.

The always magnetic Toni Collette also does her best to sell one of Bong’s most baffling creations yet, Marshall’s sauce-loving and alien-despising wife, Ylfa, while Ackie emerges with the most dignity, a genuine star who nails Bong’s bonkers tone while still keeping Nasha grounded and endearing.

Ruffalo’s scenery-chewing is matched throughout by Pattinson, who leads the ensemble with a grating accent apparently modelled after Steve Buscemi in Fargo that has never before been heard by human ears. Once Mickey 18 is introduced, however, the otherwise digestible premise descends into farce and the cast starts to compete with each other to see who can mug for the camera the most.

There’s a whole 15 minute stretch where the film almost becomes a raunchy sex comedy, which would have been enjoyable had there been anything resembling a joke and the script wasn’t so stilted.

This isn’t to say Bong has never indulged in goofiness – from his offbeat debut Barking Dogs Never Bite to Jake Gyllenhaal and Tilda Swinton’s cartoonish performances in Okja and Snowpiercer, the South Korean master has always relished in absurdism and caricature. Even one of his most sombre films, Memories of Murder, features bumbling cops and a running visual gag about drop kicks.

Unfortunately, Bong, who has the sole screenwriting credit for the film based on Edward Ashton’s sci-fi novel Mickey7, has a rare fumble by not only failing to keep the adaptation tonally consistent, but by throwing so many ideas at the wall he forgets which target he’s meant to be hitting.

Tackling the rise of fascism, racism, colonialism, ethics and bodily autonomy under capitalism is all well and good, but when the themes and metaphors start to dominate the narrative to the extent that vital plot threads are forgotten about for whole swathes of the film’s runtime, Mickey 17 starts to feel more like a brainstorming session than a blockbuster.

For the most egregious example, Yeun is criminally underused as Timo, who disappears for large chunks of the narrative only to reappear for a rambling scene to necessitate a clumsy plot development and bring up some exposition from an hour earlier most audiences will have forgotten about.

There’s also a vital element of Mickey’s past, which we won’t spoil here, that forms the basis of the first 20 minutes but is only given the briefest of lip service in the final act, though the audience is expected to treat it as if it’s been a running theme this whole time.

Luckily, the stirring final act leaves the film on a high note with a refreshing take on first contact and some stunning set pieces, albeit with a few last-minute twists that may leave viewers scratching their heads.

If this review sounds more critical than our three-star score suggests, it’s simply because, in a cinematic landscape that has systematically lowered audiences’ standards, we’ve come to expect much better from Bong, who still directs the hell out of one of the most unique sci-fi epics we’ve seen in years but falls short of his stellar track record.

Sadly, the latest and long-awaited film from one of the most reliable contemporary filmmakers may leave a sour taste in the mouth. It certainly made me question why the director behind the meticulously crafted and endlessly enthralling Parasite left me so often confused and more than a little irritated.

Mickey 17 is in cinemas from Friday, 7th March.