As one of the top directors of his generation and most influential film figures in the world, Bong Joon-ho has spent a career fostering his singular style of class commentary, black humor, and twisted scriptwriting. But these themes have always landed better in his South Korean movies than in his American coproductions. Of the former, Memories of a Murder (2003) is breathtaking in its corrosive depiction of the Korean justice system and the darkness inherent in civil society, and Parasite (2019) handles class consciousness and income inequality with equal parts levity and horror. As for the English-language pictures, Snowpiercer (2013) makes more awkward and heavy-handed work of its political themes, and Okja (2017) lands with an even bigger thud. Whether this is the result of Bong's sufficient comfort with only South Korean culture to expertly satirize it, or a better roster of Korean cast and crew to execute on his complex vision, isn't clear. 

Mickey 17, the director's latest out in theaters now, is his strongest English-language film yet. With a characteristically quirked-up white boy performance from Robert Pattinson and countless distinctively Bong-coded tropes and visual flairs, Mickey 17 is a clever sci-fi picture with a simple human core, but still doesn't hold a candle to his Korean works.

The film opens with Pattinson's character, Mickey, apparently dying in a crevasse on an icy planet. He's died a number of times, Mickey shares with us in a voiceover. (And yes, this is yet another installment of the "Robert Pattinson does a strange little accent that inexplicably doesn't stay consistent throughout the movie" cinematic universe). Down bad from some gambling debts back on the increasingly uninhabitable Earth, he's desperate to escape on one of the new spaceships offering a new life, away from the climate-change-riddled, inequality-suffering home planet. To cut the line at a sign-up event, Mickey volunteers semi-unwittingly to take a role as an "expendable," or a cloneable human who is able to repeatedly die and just be "reprinted" good as new each time. He's a pretty simple-minded guy, so faces this tough job with casual aplomb, even though it involves being exposed to deadly radiation, vomiting up blood from an unknown illness, or being incinerated in the spaceship's vat of lava-like fuel. On the four-year journey to the icy planet they'll colonize, Mickey takes great comfort in being in love with fellow passenger Nasha (Naomi Ackie), who loves each iteration of him equally, as the two enjoy a secret romance under the nose of failed Earth politician and spaceship sponsor Kenneth Marshall (Mark Ruffalo) and his psychotic wife Ylfa (Toni Collette). 

The ship finally arrives at planet Niflheim, where Mickey's seventeenth iteration (yes, Mickey 17!) almost dies in that icy crevasse. He is actually saved, though, by the planet's sole inhabitants: the "creepers," seemingly intelligent lifeforms that look like a cross between a caterpillar and an armadillo. Naturally, Kenneth and Ylfe declare war on them — what's colonization without killing the native species, especially when they look so gross and speak unintelligibly? Meanwhile, Mickey 17 returns to the spaceship and discovers that, assuming he died, the scientists have "reprinted" him into Mickey 18. "Multiples", as simultaneously living clones are called, are a big ethical and practical no-no, and Mickey 17 and 18 need to figure out coexistence without being discovered and summarily executed, while also navigating how to broker peace between humans and the creepers. 

Bong's script, based on the 2022 novel Mickey 7 by Edward Ashton (which was in turn rooted in the author's exploration of what "a sort of crappy immortality" would look like), builds a rich and convincing near-future world in which he and his characters have ample room to play around. From Pattinson's voiceover and select flashbacks, we get a darkly humorous picture of the invention of the printing and cloning technologies, including how the inventor (a hilariously Zuckerberg-esque Edward Davis) used the technology to go on a serial killing spree, or how subsequent spiritual worries from connivingly corporate religious leaders (including the terrifically self-interested personal assistant played by Daniel Henshall) outlawed the technology on Earth. Just as AI is changing our world every day, reprinting (plus dramatic climate change that doesn't feel too fictional) makes a convincing argument for how much technology has changed culture by 2054, the year in which the movie takes place. 

But while tech has changed a lot, more has stayed the same in Bong's vision of a future driven by people just as idiosyncratic as they are today. Ruffalo's megalomaniacal politician-cum-cult-leader shares undeniable similarities with a certain current president (even though Bong denies the basis), while Colette's character is a little too over-the-top but mirrors other recent first ladies pulling the strings of their less-capable husbands. The couple is cruel to the impoverished people who look up to them, and crueler still to the alien residents they can't understand and refuse to engage with. Their pathetic angling towards religious fervor and made-for-TV glamor, both enabled by Henshall's androgynous aide, underscore that nothing is new under the sun in the human nature of ruling politicians thirty years in the future. Similarly, the haplessness of lackeys of all sorts brings the same winces and uncomfortable laughs even in sci-fi realities, from a plump scientist played by Cameron Britton obtusely making a chemical weapon, to a wily friend played by Steven Yeun doing drug deals and getting in trouble on earth just as in space. 

Questionably-shifting accents aside, Pattinson's work throughout is sweet and sincere, and is a cut above even these fun and diverse supporting characters. Whether as the simpleton in love that is Mickey 17, or as Mickey 18's gunslinging wildcard, he brings a nuanced take on a classic clone performance. Moreover, Bong's script does a nice job at underscoring that even though brain chemistry and genetics stay identical, clones (like twins) can be different based on their circumstances: Mickey 17's brush with death and unexpected survival explains the greater grace and mellowness with which he approaches his sorry lot in life, while Mickey 18's violence-hardened first day alive forges him as a loose cannon. Personhood and what makes us human is a theme present throughout, but could have been explored more convincingly with stronger dialogue between the Mickeys, especially by eliminating a distractingly murky middle section that involves a romantic triangle between the Mickeys, Nasha, and fellow soldier Kai (Anamaria Vartolomei). The story would have also benefited from giving more airtime to the growing protest movement in the ship, which rises up in a crucial deus ex machina moment but is otherwise overlooked. 

Visual effects and sound mixing are both fantastic, particularly as they bestow personalities on the creepers in a way reminiscent of the linguistic and physical nuances of the heptapods in Arrival (2016). The importance of communication and translation, and the automatic otherization that evil leaders try to force on supposed "enemies" (Ender's Game, anyone?), are explored as further powerful themes. 

Bong's latest movie draws heavily on calling cards for the director, including rotund CGI creatures (see: Okja), futuristic survival in icy wastelands (see: Snowpiercer), and the rich-poor divide (see: Parasite). And while it's his best English-language outing yet, it doesn't hit the highs of which we we know he's capable.