Review: ‘Mickey 17’ Has Plenty to Offer but Isn’t Quite Sure What It Wants to Be

Knowing that death isn’t finite would surely change the way that people live. That’s assuming, however, that those who will be brought back to life have any say in what they do while they’re alive and the circumstances under which they’re reincarnated. Mickey 17, Bong Joon-ho’s follow-up to the Oscar-winning Parasite, is a playful and entertaining exploration of a near-future in which some people really are immortal, but it’s an existence that no one would desire and, predictably, doesn’t come without its share of issues and potential moral complications.

On the run from loan sharks with murderous intentions alongside his friend Timo (Steven Yeun), Mickey (Robert Pattinson) hastily signs up for an off-world expedition to a new planet led by self-serving politician Kenneth Marshall (Mark Ruffalo). He doesn’t read the fine print on the role he’s agreed to, which is to become an Expendable, meaning that he’ll be repeatedly killed and reprinted so that everyone else aboard the ship isn’t exposed to anything that could potentially harm them. It’s a torturous and repetitive process that leads to mundanity until Mickey is reprinted for the eighteenth time before anyone bothers to confirm that the seventeenth version is actually dead.

Mickey 17 is an ambitious sci-fi epic that, in many ways, couldn’t be more different from Parasite, which will certainly leave some audiences perplexed and disappointed. Based on Edward Ashton’s novel Mickey7, it starts with a high concept that doesn’t always feel fully fleshed-out. There are key details missing that perhaps don’t matter, and audiences are thrown in to the world Mickey-17 inhabits thanks to some narration to catch them up on inciting events and explain the perspective he has on this recycled life of his. It feels in many ways larger-than-life like Snowpiercer, another past Bong project that utilized a sci-fi setup to wax poetic about the nature and limits of humanity.

Pattinson, who, like his Twilight costar Kristen Stewart, has pursued much more intellectual roles in the wake of their teen vampire movie breakout than many might have expected, is key to audiences’ enjoyment of this film. His indiscernible American accent and way of speaking makes him sound quite dopey and remarkably uninvested in his own future (which makes some sense given the precariousness dependability of his day-to-day state of life), especially in comparison to the much more confident and downright cocky Mickey-18 introduced midway through the film. It’s challenging to empathize with someone who doesn’t seem like they have much of a stake in what happens to them, but who can blame him when his actual purpose aboard this ship is to be battered and killed again and again so that those considered more important don’t have to suffer in any way?

The supporting ensemble of Mickey 17 is doing a range of different things. Its strongest asset is Naomi Ackie as Nasha, a security officer on board the ship who begins a romantic relationship with Mickey and is by far the most sensible person anywhere in his orbit. Anamaria Vartolomei, Cameron Britton, and Patsy Ferran all have small but very memorable roles as personnel who know enough to play by the rules yet still have more insight into what’s going on than they freely share, and Yeun continues a fun run of different roles that look nothing like his endearing The Walking Dead character. Ruffalo is all over the place in his deliberately over-the-top turn, sometimes seeming as if he’s about to literally burst from overexertion and at others possibly imitating the speaking manner of Donald Trump, while Toni Collette chews as much scenery as she can as his wife, whose obsession with turning everything into sauces is downright bizarre and quite random.

The pieces of this film don’t necessarily combine to make a coherent whole, which sometimes feels like a stylized comedy and at others like an attempt at serious sci-fi with questionable alien design concepts. It still manages to be an entertaining watch that, at 139 minutes, is undeniably long and doesn’t always feel like it’s in a rush to get where it wants to go. But there’s something undeniably interesting and unusual about this story that does make it watchable, and while it remains committed to infusing humor up until the last moment, it still offers food for thought that may leave audiences walking out of the theater unsure what to make of this often dizzying experience.

Movie Rating: 6/10