[THIS REVIEW IS SPOILER-FREE]
This year's Berlin Film Festival saw the release of the long-awaited Mickey 17 by Bong Joon-ho, the follow-up to the director's 2019 masterpiece, Parasite. The story follows Robert Pattinson’s Mickey Barnes, who in an effort to evade murderous loan sharks, volunteers to become an “expendable” on an intergalactic mission, being killed over and over in various environments in an effort to perfect a future human colonization effort. But despite being one of the most anticipated movies of 2025, where does it stand in Bong Joon-ho's impressive film catalogue? In other words, was it worth the wait?
The opening scene to filmmaker Bong Joon Ho’s newest odyssey paints a very clear filmmaking picture. Robert Pattinson’s Mickey wakes up in a pile of snow after falling through a crevice to see Steven Yeun’s Timo hanging above him by a harness, explaining to him that he’s going to be left there to die, and reprinted the following morning. The shot-reverse-shot style of cutting is choppy, and the visual effects are average, but the dialogue is genuinely hilarious. It is immediately apparent that Bong is steering very far away from the stylistic choices he implemented in his last film, the Best Picture winner, Parasite, and veering more towards his absurdist lens, which originally put him on the map with Barking Dogs Never Bite. Thankfully, the cutting and visuals improve immensely after this opening scene, and what follows is the most fun film we’ve received in cinemas this year (even though the bar is on the floor, it’s still an achievement).
Robert Pattinson’s character (or group of characters in this instance) is both the actor’s best performance and one of Bong’s most well-crafted. His vocal performance is something you would expect out of a Spongebob episode, and his physical versatility as a performer proves more admirable than ever. His skills as a voice actor truly came to light with his performance in the English dub of Studio Ghibli's The Boy and the Heron just over a year ago.
Overall, the film has no shortage of great performances, Naomi Ackie is an utter scene-stealer bringing an effervescent, contagious energy to every frame she occupies, and her chemistry with each version of Pattinson is more infectious than the last. Toni Collette and Steven Yeun are funnier than ever, and relative newcomer Anamaria Vatolomei proves that her future in the industry is incredibly bright. Mark Ruffalo’s performance is hysterical, but his character and the flawed methodology of the film’s commentary are where we run into some problems...
Less than two months into another Trump presidency, the last thing that people want shoved in their faces is another pseudo-impression of the President and his bumbling henchmen and followers; touting large, neon red hats. Unfortunately that's exactly the approach Mickey 17 takes with its villain and his followers. Mark Ruffalo plays failed politician Kenneth Marshall, who is leading an expedition from Earth to a nearby planet with all of his “pure-bred” followers and supporters to lead a colonization effort, but when they arrive on the planet, they realize they aren’t the only ones trying to forge their path, similar to Dune.
This leads to interesting explorations and conversations about immigration, colonizations, ethical technology usage, and even animal rights, but the presentation is far more unsubtle than what we’re used to getting from Bong. His intricate, slow-burning commentary muscles have always been more flexed than his over-the-top parody ones, so it didn’t come as a huge surprise that many of the choices involving Mark Ruffalo’s character don’t work fully in the script and the performance. With a movement as loud and obnoxious as MAGA, we’ve reached a point in our world where trying to tackle a critique of the hyper-conservative ideology requires the use of a much more fine-toothed comb than it did circa 2015. In other words, quite frankly, if I see one more movie where the spray-tanned, loud-mouthed, blow-hard failed politician has a bunch of crazed followers with big red hats, I’m going to lose my mind.
Bong has never been a stranger to trying to cram as many thematic eggs as possible into one basket, but this is his first effort in a long while where the act of you as a viewer noticing this becomes more of a hindrance than an advantage to the screenplay. The story takes a somewhat dramatic shift a little over halfway through, and as a result the third act heavily drags and could wind up losing close to fifteen minutes.
Despite these clear issues, the film has far more to offer than just zany performances and funny line deliveries. The musical score, as usual with Bong’s films, is one of the most underscored and underrated elements of the film. This is one of my favorite scores from him, and it is always implemented tastefully into the narrative, never compromising any of the performances or cutting happening on screen.
Aside from the aforementioned opening scene, the cinematography and editing are stellar, done by Bong's frequent collaborators: Darius Khondji Yang Jin-mo. The camera moves with such fluidity that many individual shots feel as though they contain their own narrative, and many of the funniest visual gags in the whole film are heavily reliant on the camera’s ability to find newer, more creative ways to visually communicate ideas.
At the end of the day, more than anything else, it was truly a joy to watch Bong take a 150 million dollar check and go full gonzo without any sort of looming pressure to try and either top his Best Picture-winning effort or sell out for the sake of a cheap box office return. He remains one of the best filmmakers working today, and whatever film he makes next, I can personally guarantee that I will be the first one in line.
Mickey 17 releases in the United States on March 7th from Warner Bros. Pictures.