Mickey 17 (2025 | USA | 139 minutes | Bong Joon Ho)
Pity poor Mickey Barnes. Life is pretty terrible for most people in a dystopia, of course, but for Mickey, it’s particularly awful because he just cannot stay dead when he dies. As an “expendable,” he signed up to a life of many deaths and as many resurrections (reprintings).
Mickey 17 is Bong Joon Ho’s first film since he won Best Director and his film Parasite won Best Film at the Academy Awards in 2020. Like all of Bong’s recent films, Mickey 17 is a critique of class stratification under the crushing realities of capitalism.
Robert Pattinson is particularly well-cast as Mickey. He’s been one of my favorite actors of late, but I didn’t know physical comedy was in his wheelhouse. It’s also impressive where he doesn’t really allow Mickey to be overcome with pathos. He accepted that his lot is to die for the cause of science, repeatedly, and for the ambitions of a megalomaniacal Muskian/Trumpian rich guy (Mark Ruffalo) and his tacky wife (Toni Collette), who want to colonize another planet. Sure, Mickey would prefer it if you didn’t ask what it’s like to die so often.
The movie is mostly great. The cinematography is great, the acting is (of course) great, the set design and costumes: also great. Sometimes the moralizing felt heavy-handed at times, but there’s enough subtle, and overt, humor and excellent pacing to make up for that.
Naomi Ackie is the breakout star here. As Nasha, the love interest of all of the Mickeys. She’s pretty fierce and steals every scene she’s in. There’s a particularly funny scene where she becomes rivals with Kai, a wonderful Anamarie Vartolomei. She looked eerily familiar until I realized she’s one of the stars of the excellent Count of Monte Cristo adaptation I watched a few months ago.
Mickey volunteers to become an “expendable” on an ice planet as a means of escaping some rather aggressive loan sharks on earth when his, and his friend Timo’s, business venture goes belly-up. Timo (Steven Yeun). Timo, for his part, becomes a pilot. Mickey must endure some experiments knowing that he’ll die and be reborn. Some of those experiments would make Mengele queasy.
Problems arise for him when his live-a-little-die-a-little life gets complicated when he’s sent on what amounts to a suicide mission to a field of creatures called “Creepers.” The creepers, who look like they were extras left over from Dune 2, decide not to eat Mickey alive. Mickey, the seventeenth iteration, is assumed dead and an eighteenth Mickey is printed out. Duplicates of expendables is a huge breech of protocol. Nasha, though, has some ideas of what she wants to do with the two Mickeys. Kai wants one for herself.
Having seen most of Bong’s movies, with Snowpiercer and Okja coming to mind first, I found a lot of similarities with those movies and Mickey 17, though I suspect those who have only seen Parasite may find themselves confused as to why this film followed up his beloved masterpiece.
Mickey 17 is far from a perfect movie. As I said, sometimes it feels heavy-handed but the humor, the acting, the scenery, and the pacing provide a rewarding filmgoing experience.
_____________________________
Mickey 17 opens in theaters on Friday, March 7.