An expendable space cadet who is reborn as a clone every time he dies assists an ungrateful intergalactic commission establish a new base on an alien planet in Mickey 17, opening in Prague and cinemas worldwide this weekend. Multiple engaging performances by lead Robert Pattinson and expectedly first-rate visual filmmaking from director Bong Joon-ho make this one worth seeing, but an aloof tone and pacing and narrative issues keep it from truly soaring.
Pattinson stars as titular Mickey Barnes, who we first meet covered in snow at the bottom of the pit on the Hoth-like ice planet Niflheim. This is Mickey’s 17th iteration as an “expendable”: a human used for only the most dangerous of grunt work, and space pilot and friend Timo (Steven Yeun) is amazed that he has survived whatever misfortune has left him here.
But Mickey 17 is about to become Mickey 18, as Timo isn’t exactly there to rescue him: his rope is a just a little too short, and there’s an unnerving alien rumbling down in the nearby caves. Timo retrieves Mickey’s flamethrower, but why exert himself and risk his own health to save his friend; they’ll just print him out again tomorrow, right?
This five-minute opening is the perfect introduction to Mickey 17‘s core themes, which explore issues of life and death and individuality. Mickey is resurrected after each death like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day (or, perhaps more accurately, Tom Cruise in Edge of Tomorrow)… but what effect does the experience of death have on each future iteration? How does he co-exist with others who expect him to die, and are so flippant about his life?
But before Mickey 17 can explore these themes, or even continue its story… I bet you’re wondering just how Mickey got here. Enter a 30-minute flashback and exposition dump to tell the story of Mickey’s failed macaron business, insurmountable debt to mobster Darius Blank (Ian Hanmore), ill-conceived plan to flee Earth aboard a starship on a 4.5-year mission to establish a colony on an alien world, and complex romance with Nasha (Naomi Ackie).
Mickey 17 takes more than half an hour to catch us up to speed and deliver a title card, with rat-a-tat narration from Pattinson delivering all the backstory we never really needed. It will do this twice more, to explain the interplanetary mission itself, led by narcissistic dictator Kenneth Marshall (Mark Ruffalo) and his wife Yifa (Toni Collette), and the rules of the expendables, necessitated when one of the scientists who created the technology used it to become a serial killer with multiple versions of himself.
The structure of Mickey 17‘s narrative keeps us from really engaging in any kind of active storyline, and while all the asides are all entertaining, the pacing flags over the film’s first half. It does come to life during the climax, when multiple versions of Mickey start working together (shades of Michael Keaton in Multiplicity) to take down Marshall, but by that time, the movie has run out of story to tell.
It’s Pattinson’s performances that keep us interested throughout, particularly the titular protagonist, twitchy and angst-ridden after experiencing sixteen deaths—with more to look forward to on the horizon. When Mickey 18 comes out dark and despondent, and ready to punish the world, we can empathize.
Ruffalo’s depiction of Mickey 17‘s primary antagonist, meanwhile, is problematic. With perpetually pursed lips over-enunciating every line, his brand of broad SNL-level parody reduces a character that we should love to hate into a bizarre distraction. It’s a strange choice, especially next to all the other comedic turns here that hit the right level of Brazil-like satire, including Collette as Marshall’s sauce-obsessed wife, Cameron Britton as the bumbling scientist who exposes Mickey to various life-threatening inventions, Patsy Ferran as the mousy face that greets Mickey every time he wakes up, and Tim Key, who goes through the entire movie in a pigeon costume, for reasons blessedly unexplained.
Mickey 17 also looks great, with cinematography by Darius Khondji contrasting white-blasted exteriors on the ice planet with grungy industrial space station interiors, evoking the director’s Prague-shot 2013 thriller Snowpiercer. That remains Bong Joon-ho‘s best English-language feature, with Okja and now Mickey 17 delivering a lot to like but ultimately falling somewhat short.
There’s a lot of interesting material in Edward Ashton’s source novel Mickey7, but the filmmaker might have attempted to fit too much of it into an expedited running time here. Audiences expecting something on the level of the writer-director’s Oscar-winning Parasite might leave Mickey 17 bitterly disappointed, but even a lesser offering from Bong Joon-ho is still well worth catching.
