Mickey 17

Robert Pattinson

I thought the underwhelming commercial and critical reception to Bong Joon Ho's Mickey 17 was an appropriate response to the film's modest charms. The film is, fatally, both overlong and slight, a commercial project aligned with its director's anti-elitist leanings that attempts to reach a larger audience than his usual art house fare, much like Bong's earlier Snowpiercer and Okja. Like those two films, Mickey 17 is set in a dystopian future. Robert Pattinson stars as Mickey Barnes, a shy loser who is in desperate straits after the failure of his macaroon business. Barnes agrees to sign on to a space colonization mission helmed by Kenneth Marshall (Mark Ruffalo), a bloviating ex-politician with delusions of grandeur. Mickey becomes a sort of canary in the coal mine for the mission. When he dies after experiencing whatever toxic events can be experienced on a possible host planet, a new iteration of him is reborn after he is spat out by a human printing machine. Thus, the central premise of the film is the eternal recurrence found in such popular favorites as Groundhog Day and Edge of Tomorrow. 

The variation on this theme, derived from Edward Ashton's source novel, is that a Mickey 18 is manufactured when Mickey 17 is mistakenly thought dead, so that our hero must deal with his doppelganger. The double is met with delight by Mickey's girlfriend Nasha (Naomi Ackie) who is eager to have another playmate. However, Mickey 17 views the new iteration with trepidation. Mickey 18 has a completely different moral compass than #17 and is soon plotting to eliminate the craven Marshall. Mickey 17 bonds with the creatures on the possible host planet, monikered "creepers", and a finale is concocted after lengthy digressions and feigned peril that upholds virtue and repudiates genetic engineering.

Bong's visual style is consistent with the film's flip tone. The production values are exemplary. The space ship in this film looks more lived in than most of the gleaming monstrosities found in this genre. I found Jung Jae-il's score to be spritely and appropriate. However, I also found the whole enterprise to be a trifle compared to the director's best efforts: Memories of Murder, Mother, and Parasite. As in Snowpiercer and Okja, the comic book tone of the proceedings eventually proves wearisome. Nowhere is this more true than in regarding Mickey 17's one dimensional villains. Ruffalo's melding of Trump and Wayne Newton ultimately proves as tiresome as Tilda Swinton's imitation of Mrs. Thatcher in Snowpiercer and Jake Gyllenhaal's hysterical mugging in Okja. Toni Collette, as Ruffalo's missus, has little to except extend her talons. 

That said, I did like most of Mickey 17's supporting performances from Ms. Ackie, Steven Yeun, Anamaria Vartolomei, Holliday Grainger, and, especially, Patsy Ferran. The main reason to see the flick is to witness Mr. Pattinson doing double duty. As he has proven in the last decade, Mr. Pattinson is one of the cinema's finest and most versatile leading men. His performance as the guileless Mickey 17 is the heart of the film, giving it most of its goofy appeal. Overall, though, this is one of the talented Mr. Bong's lesser efforts: better than Okja, but not as memorable as Snowpiercer.