Bong’s latest may lack a distinct thematic through-train and the plot occasionally wobbles along, but its mix of sardonic wit and fun sci-fi action should please most audiences as an expendable man is sent on suicidal scouting missions and ‘reprinted’ back again.
Review #2,957
Dir. Bong Joon-ho
2025 | USA | Sci-Fi, Drama, Comedy | 137min | 1.85:1 | English
M18 (passed clean) for violent content, language throughout, sexual content and drug material
Cast: Robert Pattinson, Naomi Ackie, Steven Yeun, Mark Ruffalo, Toni Collette
Plot: A disposable 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.
Awards: Official Selection (Berlinale)
Distributor: Warner
Accessibility Index
Subject Matter: Colonising a Planet; Living & Dying
Narrative Style: Slightly Complex
Pace: Normal
Audience Type: Slightly Mainstream
Viewed: In Theatres – The Projector Cineleisure
Spoilers: No
It has already been six years since Parasite (2019) but Bong Joon-ho’s eighth feature finally arrives in cinemas after some post-production delays.
It rounds up Bong’s ‘International’ trilogy, which consists of Snowpiercer (2013) and Okja (2017) as the Korean superstar director continues his foray into English-language blockbuster filmmaking, this time with Robert Pattinson headlining as Mickey Barnes.
Due to bad circumstances that have befallen him on Earth (as explained in a nifty flashback sequence), Barnes decides that the only way out is to join a space expedition to colonise the distant planet Niflheim.
His unenviable job that nobody wants to do: be an Expendable i.e. to keep dying and be ‘reprinted’ back to life in the name of research and exploration.
So, he (Mickey 1, 2, 3, … 17) is sent on countless suicide missions to scout the planet to ensure everyone learns of the dangers, until one day, something unexpected happens.
“Our entire life is a punishment.”
Pattinson is fantastic playing ‘multiple roles’ and is joined by a cantankerous Mark Ruffalo, whose Kenneth Marshall commands the ship as a failed politician with an authoritarian vision of a pure race inhabiting that new planet. Obviously, one can easily draw parallels with the madmen of the world that oppress and exploit entire peoples.
Bong seems to let everything play out effortlessly, with a mix of sardonic wit and fun sci-fi action, though Mickey 17 may sometimes feel like there are too many characters calling for attention that they become reduced to ‘types’ so that the plot can wobble along like the cute bug-like creatures that adorn Niflheim.
I think many will have a decent time with the movie even though there is no clear thematic through-train that, well, literally guided Snowpiercer, or even the occasionally tonally suspect, Okja.
To say that Mickey 17 is Edge of Tomorrow (2014) meets Starship Troopers (1997) also doesn’t shed light on what film it wants to be.
I wished there had been less creature spectacle and more intrigue that fully leveraged on the Mickeys’ trepidation of being exposed. At the very least, the film makes us think about our mortality—to fear, or perhaps embrace, dying one day.
Grade: B
Trailer:
Music:
Eternality Tan 