‘Mickey 17’ – Review
It is without a doubt one of our most anticipated releases of 2025, and now Academy Award-winner Bong Joon-ho, in his eagerly awaited post-Parasite feature film, has delivered us the wildly original Mickey 17, and this is a film that is not what you expect, but everything you could want.
The unlikely hero, Mickey Barnes (Robert Pattinson) has found himself in the extraordinary circumstance of working for an employer who demands the ultimate commitment to the job… to die, for a living.
For more than 25 years, South Korean filmmaker Bong Joon-ho has proven himself to be an adept artist you can’t pigeonhole and who has mastered every part of the genre, delivering films that are not only fully engaging for audiences but which also deliver up unique thoughts and incredible discussion. He made waves across the globe with his genre-bending psychological thriller Parasite, which he would be lauded for with an Academy Award for Best Director. Now in his post-Oscar win, audiences have been eagerly waiting his next project, and he has gifted us with Mickey 17. Its narrative of sci-fi/comedy cloning satire is the perfect canvas on which Joon-ho can unleash his talents. Loosely adapting Edward Ashton’s novel Mickey7, Joon-ho takes the structure of Ashton’s story and completely makes it his own, utilising his own sensibilities and style in drawing out the psychological complexity of multiple Mickey’s and implanting a sharp social commentary that keeps audiences primed the whole way through.
In relation to the experience of this film, Mickey 17 is an audaciously original piece of cinema, feeling utterly refreshing as a cinematic experience. What we see with this film is Bong Joon-ho bringing his unique eye and expression of filmmaking, which has been honed with Eastern sensibilities and styles, onto a Western space of big-budget tentpole blockbusters, and the result is something totally unique. Everything from narrative and character development to cinematography, production design and score all feel different and completely in tone with the production, and there’s a creative depth and left-field style that makes Mickey 17 one of the cleverest films we’ve seen in recent years. Joon-ho also mines his film’s razor-edged satire to the fullest effect, and there’s incredible subtext present in his thematic exploration of what it means to live, love and ultimately die throughout this picture. His penchant for mixing genre is fully present throughout the film, and sometimes even within the same scene, as he moves from laugh-out-loud comedic moments to deep drama and chilling horror before returning to whimsical sci-fi. And it all makes for a film to be savoured in all its flavour.
Mickey 17’s complete delicacy of expression is made possible by an incredible performance from Robert Pattinson as the film’s protagonist Mickey Barnes, a good-meaning slacker, who is perpetually unlucky, and who signs up to be an ‘Expendable’ in order to escape his problems. Suddenly finding himself as a human lab rat/crash test dummy, Mickey undergoes the worst experiences possible in order to help the Nilfheim expedition meet its fullest potential. Along the way, with each Mickey, he learns more about himself and ultimately becomes a saviour figure for the human species in the most unexpected way possible. For Pattinson, a thespian who radiates in off-beat performances, Mickey Barnes’s character allows him the option of full expression, and he goes to town with his multiple character iterations.
These multiple Mickeys, chief among them Mickey 17 and Mickey 18, allow Pattinson a wide range of character expression and development. And that’s where the fun begins. As Mickey 17 he’s a slightly simple-minded yet genial everyman who’s just looking to belong before an ‘accident’ leads him to become Mickey 18, a psychotic bully with a hair-trigger temper and worse impulse control, and when these two Mickeys collide, the fun fully begins! Pattinson is offered great scope for experimentation with Mickey 17, and you get to see all of it across this narrative as he finds a way to develop each iteration of Mickey Barnes fully, with all of it adding to his total performance.
Bong Joon-ho finds a truly captivating supporting cast for this picture. There’s Naomi Ackie as Nasha Barridge, Mickey’s love interest, who makes for a gun-ho action star and delivers a considerable voice of reason to the plot. Steven Yeun’s Timo is the ultimate doucebag as Mickey’s sleazy ‘best friend’, and his cracking comedic timing will leave you with all the giggles. And then there’s Mark Ruffalo as Kenneth Marshall, an egomaniacal politician with a god complex grandeur than the very universe, and Toni Collette as his scheming and devious wife Ylfa, and these two are just the WORST, and some of the most disgusting screen villains we’ve seen in a long time. Each of these characters adds considerable depth and development to the overall narrative of Mickey 17, and they each hit their marks fully under Bong Joon-ho’s direction.
Mickey 17 is a film that takes plenty of risks with its narrative and, in the process, achieves in every category. Its originality and sensibilities as a production make it a fresh watch for audiences, and there’s a lot going on under the hood. From its observation of the banality of immortality to the pummelling of the worst of corporate culture and its reflection of a literal toxic work environment, Bong Joon-ho gives this film a texture and style all its own. Its off-beat and unexpected comedy will also have you in fits of laughter at the most unexpected moments, and it’s also surprisingly sweet at the same time. For Bong Joon-ho, Mickey 17 is a film that is worthy of his grand talent, and the audience is the clear winner with this one.
In conclusion, Mickey 17 is a wildly original and completely insane watch of genre-bending cleverness, which makes it one of the most thought-provoking and memorable cinematic experiences you’ll see all year.
Image: Warner Brothers Pictures
