Mickey 17 is a film even weirder than you can anticipate, and that’s saying something given the hype around director Bong Joon Ho and lead star Robert Pattinson’s offbeat and highly anticipated teaming up.
This sci-fi’s bizarreness is actually one of its strongest qualities, given the glee with which the director leans into its madcap chaos and humour.
The other, undoubtedly, is Pattinson, who is insanely good in his contrasting role(s) of a lifetime.
Adapted by Parasite’s Bong Joon Ho from Edward Ashton’s Mickey7 novel, Twilight actor Pattinson is Mickey Barnes, a down-on-his-luck, rather pathetic guy who signs up to become an ‘expendable’ – a disposable clone worker – after getting into a sticky situation on Earth.
It’s the year 2054 and he’s headed to a distant ice planet as part of a human colony led by failed politician Kenneth Marshall (Mark Ruffalo, giving his best Donald Trump-inspired performance around a terrifying set of fake teeth) and his cloying but devious wife Ylfa (Toni Collette).
A hallmark of Mickey’s job – we meet the 17th version – is his colleagues’ obsession with asking him what death is like, despite the cheerfully off-hand way with which they deal with several of his demises.
Mickey is essentially a human guinea pig, perfectly recreated each time he’s ‘printed’ out of a special machine that rebuilds him identically from waste organic matter, replanting all of his memories – from toxic radiation exposure to vomiting up blood after catching lethal virus.
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Mickey 17’s constant dealing with death pairs perfectly with the dark, deadpan humour throughout, such as when Pattinson’s Mickey gets offended that it doesn’t look like he’ll be eaten by the terrifying centipede-cum-termite creatures native to their new home, as everyone is assuming.
‘I’m perfectly good meat! I taste fine,’ he yells in annoyance, not yet knowing this will become a major issue. For when he finally makes it back to the ship, Mickey 18 is already printed out and sleeping in his bed. However, ‘multiples’ are illegal, following an entertainingly macabre situation with one of the technology’s creators, which I won’t spoil.
Despite his loser-like status, Mickey’s security agent girlfriend Nasha (a delightfully sweary Naomi Ackie), is actually very okay with two Mickeys, even if they have to stay a secret, and here we find out that each Mickey always has a different personality.
While Micky 17 is a bit of a wimp, played with a touch of Steve Buscemi and an ‘aw shucks’ cartoon-y US accent by Pattinson, Mickey 18 is a lot meaner. A bit of a psycho in fact, one could argue – or as Nasha puts it, ‘mild Mickey and habanero Mickey’.
If anyone’s still doubting that Pattinson is one of his generation’s finest acting talents, Mickey 17 should silence them as Pattinson takes risks and attacks not one, but two, very different characters. The film would struggle without him as its lynchpin.
But it also left me frustrated because Mickey 17 could have been a knock-out – but it isn’t.
While a 137-minute runtime isn’t particularly long nowadays, for a film as unevenly paced as this, it actually is.
It’s a slow build up, with not a huge amount of character development, to get us to a riveting middle hour or so until the film gets twisted up in a drawn-out denouement.
Obviously, it was always going to be a tough ask for Bong Joon Ho to follow up the ground-breaking, Oscar-winning triumph of Parasite, but the fact it’s such a tightly, perfectly packaged film almost shows up the flaws of Mickey 17 in that regard more harshly.
When it’s good, Mickey 17 is brilliant, with flashes of genius throughout thanks to its biting wit, interesting central conceit and a collection of great cast performances.
But when it lags, it’s long-winded and, dare I say, a tiny bit boring?
However, it’s hard to tire of Pattinson, or Ruffalo and Colette as a terrifyingly tanned power couple, with the actors clearly enjoying themselves immensely as vacuous, despotic maniacs – although a touch more development or backstory here could have moved them away from bordering on caricature.
There’s also a fabulous bunch of British actors in support – Thomas Turgoose, Patsy Ferran, Holliday Grainger and Angus Imrie among others – which goes to show how well Bong Joon Ho’s filmmaking naturally melds with a British sense of humour.
While Mickey 17 doesn’t reach the dizzying heights I hoped, it’s still a mostly engaging movie – and certainly a more original concept that many a sci-fi film or TV show being pumped out right now. So see it for that, see it for Pattinson’s astonishing performance(s), and see it for the fact that its quirkiness sees one actor dressed in a pigeon suit throughout.
Mickey 17 is released in cinemas on Friday, March 7.
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