Bong Joon-Ho, owner of a coherent and solid filmography, has always moved between the thriller and science fiction, with a peculiar comiquero style that has gained more and more followers over the years. After the overwhelming success of ‘Parasitos’ (Palma de Oro, Oscar for Best Film), the whole world had his eyes on the Korean filmmaker.
Six years later, his new film, of American production, continues that path taking us to a dystopian future in which humans no longer want to inhabit the earth. Such is the despair and precariousness that is experienced, that Mickey (Robert Pattinson) agrees to be a “expendable” on another planet, that is, a guinea pig of the Indies of the high spheres that is willing to die as many times as necessary, since every time he does, he will undergo an advanced reprint process where he will be the person who was again. The objective of the Machiavellian company is double: experimenting with a future immortality and colonizing the new territory, inhabited by dangerous hairy worms.
This hopeless world, led by a sperm magnate (Mark Ruffalo) and his wife (Toni Collette), connects directly with the desire for power and unscrupulous ambition by Donald Trump and his friend Elon Musk. The problem is not only that the political satire that Bong launches is quite crude, but is never really acidic, much less how fun it pretends to be. The foolish and easy humor lands in numerous scenes that did not need that comic relief. An obvious symptom that the film does not know what is the tone that you should use to tell this story.
Another of the great injuries of production is its dispersed and disorganized structure, which throws any indication of intrigue. Coming from a filmmaker as imaginative and with a sense of narrative rhythm as agile as Bong, it is surprising how inert this very expensive – about 118 million dollars – an experiment.
The message – well underlined – about the importance of rejecting the systems that see us as simple numbers and claiming humanity above the artificial is very good, but when to solve this very long odyssey there is no better option than to resort to a Deus ex Machina, it is that everything is built on foundations that are not supported.
Luckily Robert Pattinson is there enduring how the inconsistencies of such a limited script can. His delivery to the role and his charisma manages to provide the protagonist of a certain charm. It is the best that ‘Mickey 17’ has, a film that does not work either as a socio -political criticism or as a popcorn entertainment.
