REVIEW: MICKEY 17

4/5

17 Again

137 Mins. Starring: Robert Pattinson, Naomi Ackie, Steven Yeun, Toni Collette & Mark Ruffalo. Screenplay: Bong Joon Ho. Director: Bong Joon Ho. In: Theatres.

Hey, Mickey, you're so fine, you're so fine, they blow your mind. Hey, Mickey! BANG! BANG! SPLAT! Hey, Mickey! BANG! BANG! SPLAT! Snowpiercing a satirical cinematic classic, that's the same animal as Netflix's 'Okja', great South Korean director Bong Joon Ho serves as 'The Host' of his first film since his Oscar winning 'Parasite' bit both the Best International Feature and the Best Picture gold at the 92nd Academy Awards. Regardless of all that, this Warner Brothers and Brad Pitt Plan B production explosive epic was a box-office bomb. Despite garnering critical acclaim since Cannes for one of the Tarantino and Lee best today who cites Scorsese as his absolute inspiration to cinema. Never matter, this science-fiction black comedy has so much more to say and will stay with you long after the final credits have rolled, like the newspapers reading reviews those tilting up theatre seats should have heeded.

Based on Edward Ashton's novel 'Mickey7', 'Mickey 17' comes just a few years later for your antimatter blues (I smell a sequel). Like a Tom Cruise 'Edge Of Tomorrow' with 'Multiplicity' like Michael Keaton shaving his own tongue, 'Mickey 17' stars Robert Pattinson, Robert Pattinson, Robert Pattinson, and...well, you get the idea. It's 'Dumb and Dumber', too, for all you Beavis and Butthead jackasses. But this is 'The Batman's' best role since the darkest of nights, and one hell of a good time for the 'Twilight' superstar turned world's finest actor. 'The Lighthouse', 'Tenet', 'Harry Potter and The Goblet Of Fire'. This is one of Pattinson's most perfect performances ever. Like you've never seen...or heard him before. You want to talk about people playing conflicted characters to the hilt? How about someone who literally displays all parts of a person's personality for all to see, right there in front of you? The id, the superego, it's all there for you to unpack in your next cinematic session, which is amongst the best dark room therapy tickets can buy these days.

Bong lowers the boom too. Joon jabs at America, as the Korean returns to English language movies like the two this shares DNA with. Not to mention the social society of an applied age where we treat people like they are replaceable. The post-apocalyptic dystopian days broken promises of 'Snowpiercer', whose train even tunnelled its way to a Netflix series. The streaming service's outstanding 'Okja' creature feature that shows us how we really treat all creatures great and small. Seventeen, like a J-Pop group, also brings us the K drama of a colony that renders people as expendables like Stallone and Schwarzenegger. Unless those people are self-appointed "lords" of all these flies. With red caps, covering ignorance as well as they do bald patches, tipped to trumped-up politicians who crave attention and power, without giving any to the people they should ask themselves what they can do for. With an almost Harrison Ford, Red Hulk rage, Avenger and outspoken campaigning actor Mark Ruffalo (even gaudier than his 'Poor Things' character meets Stanley Tucci in 'The Hunger Games') and the great Toni Collette are basically playing The Donald and Melania.

Add the 'Beef' of the great Steven Yeun playing a total prick to absolute perfection. in this cut, and it's a good job a screaming and dying Pattinson has himself...or is it?! He's not alone, though. Whitney Houston biopic star Naomi Ackie ('Star Wars: The Rise Of The Skywalker', 'Blink Twice') wants to dance with somebody, and those somebodies love her...and her fully-charged scene stealing. Live. Die. Copy and paste. Clone and reprint, repeat, there is nothing disposable about this film's recycled message, like theatre waste. Even if it does feel a little long-winded in the end. It's still one of the best blockbuster's and a thinking man's one too. It may not gobble up any awards, but it will garner a cult following of movie nerds who will geek out on this for generations, like a Starship Trooper they lost their hearts too. This frozen-over piercer of a snow planet full of Creepers and more creeps and males with problems than a Radiohead song really plugs in. It's an epic experiment that works over and over again. No matter what it throws at you. Messy, but meaningful, this Mickey is no mouse in a world of men that act like rats. Eliminate that! TIM DAVID HARVEY.

Further Filming: 'Snowpiercer', 'Okja', 'Multiplicity'.