Warner Bros. bets big on Parasite auteur Bong Joon-ho with Mickey 17, the director’s first film since that historic Oscar night over 5 years ago. However, those going into his follow-up expecting the meticulously-crafted thrills of that Best Picture winner may do well to recalibrate tonal expectations closer to Joon-ho’s other English-language features Snowpiercer and Okja. Though the budget and scale are the largest that he’s worked with so far, the film tracks thematically with Joon-ho’s previous output, exploring subjects like class imbalance and mankind’s impact on the environment. This time around, he leans into other themes like the rise of authoritarianism and finding one’s humanity within a broken system, speaking more directly to our current political moment. When it’s all said and done, the movie is a maximalist mess that still ends up working, despite itself.
Our protagonist in this near-future madcap journey is Mickey Barnes (Robert Pattinson), a hapless entrepreneur who signs up for a space expedition to get off the planet where ruthless loan sharks are hot on his trail. His business partner Timo (Steven Yeun) joins him on the mission to the ice planet Niflheim but since Mickey lack’s Timo’s pilot skills, he has to sign up as an “Expendable”. This means that he’s treated like a human guinea pig, tasked with the most dangerous jobs onboard and in the event of his death, the crew simply prints up a new version of Mickey with his memories intact. After the 17th iteration of Mickey takes a nasty fall while researching cave-dwelling critters, he’s left for dead but when he ends up making it back to base, he finds that he’s already been replaced by a new clone.
This creates a conundrum that serves as Mickey 17‘s primary conflict, as the instance of multiple versions of the same individual is strictly against protocol and if 17 and 18 are discovered, both will be killed and their backed-up memories will be erased. The cloning technology has been outlawed on Earth and before politician and mission leader Kenneth Marshall (Mark Ruffalo) and his wife Ylfa (Toni Collette) take off for Niflheim, they agree to terminate any “multiples” that may crop up. Shortly after 17 and 18 meet, they both appear to Mickey’s on-board girlfriend Nasha (Naomi Ackie) but are soon after discovered by cadet Kai (Anamaria Vartolomei), who isn’t nearly as willing as Nasha is to keep the Mickeys’ secret.
So obviously Mickey 17 has plenty going on and it’s hard not to feel like Bong Joon-ho simply has too many plates spinning during this story. Subplots take over the entire narrative for stretches and then aren’t addressed again, while potentially intriguing avenues generated by the high concept premise are never explored. As he did with Okja, Joon-ho dedicates too much screen time to actors luxuriating in their characters’ quirks, without generating much insight or humor in the process. Collette is a talented actress but she could play this sort of generically manipulative type in her sleep and Ylfa’s odd fixation with sauces is, for some reason, given precedence late in the film. Ruffalo is playing things way too broad, taking a megalomaniacal role that may have been written with some finesse on the page, but loses any of its nuance in his scenery-chewing performance.
The engine that makes Mickey 17 run, despite its preoccupations and obstructions, is the work of Robert Pattinson in a demanding dual role. Even though 17 and 18 have the same genetic makeup, Pattinson finds ways to delineate the personalities between the two so we’re never confused who is who. While 17 has subservient and beleaguered demeanor, 18 is more stern and prone to act decisively — in some cases, violently. 17 remains the kind of hard-luck good guy it’s easy to root for in a tale like this but 18 represents the darker impulses that can reside in that same man. Also narrating the movie’s voiceover, Pattinson is all over Mickey 17 and with a lesser actor at the helm, the project wouldn’t work nearly as well. He makes it an intergalactic trip worth taking.
Score – 3/5
New movies coming this weekend:
Playing in theaters is Novocaine, an action comedy starring Jack Quaid and Amber Midthunder, involving a mild-mannered bank manager with a rare disorder that prevents him from feeling physical pain who fights to rescue the girl of his dreams after she’s taken hostage in a robbery.
Also coming to theaters is Opus, a music-based mystery starring Ayo Edebiri and John Malkovich, following a young writer as she’s invited to the remote compound of a legendary pop star, who mysteriously disappeared thirty years ago.
Premiering on Netflix is The Electric State, a sci-fi adventure starring Millie Bobby Brown and Chris Pratt, about an orphaned teen who hits the road to find her long-lost brother, teaming up with a mysterious robot, a smuggler and his wisecracking sidekick.