Bong Joon Ho’s techno-fascism satire MICKEY 17 narrated by Mickey (Robert Pattinson), has gotten into debt with a loan shark because of his macaron shop and, in order to disappear from Earth, joins the dubious expedition of pop politician Kenneth Marshall (Mark Ruffalo) and his wife Ylfa (Toni Collette) to the planet Niflheim as an “Expendable.“ Mickey's purpose is to die again and again as a kind of human laboratory rat, only to have a new body printed out immediately afterwards and his memories fed into him from a brick storage device.

Mickey's story initially sends a chill down your spine. Similar human experiments were actually carried out by Sigmund Rascher and Josef Mengele in Nazi concentration camps. Here, it’s accompanied by a cheerful business pragmatism. A pretty woman explains to Mickey how his body and soul will be digitized and he can then start. Complications only arise when Mickey 17 surprisingly survives a death and drags himself back to the base, where Mickey 18 is already napping in his bunk.

In the end this, of course, leads the a big battle between good and evil, in which the indigenous inhabitants of the planet, a kind of intelligent giant woodlice, also play an important role. The story takes a more genre-typical course before the showdown between Mickey 17, Mickey 18, their friend Nasha (Naomi Ackie), the villainous Marshalls and the angry woodlice. Bong isn’t a subtle director, he prefers to go all out. Toni Colette and Mark Ruffalo as a TV politician embody absolute cretins with obvious relish. MICKEY 17 is a very entertaining experience.

Tom Dorow

Translation: Elinor Lewy