“Mickey 17” is the kind of movie where you just have to trust the filmmaker to take you on a ride. Fortunately, it’s a filmmaker who has proven trustworthy with such rides in the past. Six years ago, writer/director Bong Joon-ho released “Parasite,” another movie that didn’t really telegraph its story. Even if people knew about its early stages about an impoverished family taking on jobs as servants of a wealthy family, they probably wouldn’t have been able to guess where the story was going. But enough people trusted Bong enough to see the film, which they overwhelmingly loved. Word of mouth carried the film to a Best Picture Oscar win, even though it was still a tricky movie to summarize because of all the subtleties and tonal shifts.
“Mickey 17” isn’t nearly as complex or obscure as “Parasite,” but it requires a similar leap of faith. That is to say, the mere premise of Robert Pattinson on a spaceship dying over and over again may not sound all that appealing, but Robert Pattinson on a spaceship dying over and over again, brought to us by the guy that did “Parasite”? I’ll buy a ticket, because I’m sure Bong is going somewhere awesome with this. And yes, the movie does go to some awesome places, though not every place it goes is awesome.
Pattinson plays Mickey, an “expendable” onboard a spaceship headed toward an alien planet. He was only allowed on the spaceship, which got him away from loan sharks on Earth, because he volunteered for the most dangerous job. The deep-sea pipeline workers in last week’s “Last Breath” were said to have one of the most dangerous jobs on Earth. With all due respect to those characters, Mickey’s job is the most dangerous off of Earth, and the likelihood of death is 100%.
Mickey’s job is to be a test subject for all things deadly. The dangers of outer space, viruses, artificial food, and the atmosphere of the new planet are all things tried on Mickey. And sometimes he dies. But it’s okay, because the ship’s scientists can use an elaborate printer to make a new body, upload his conscience from a computer, and just like that, Mickey’s ready for another task. When we join Mickey, he’s died 16 times and is mostly just bored with his job, though he does enjoy the company of friend from Earth Timo (Steven Yuen) and girlfriend onboard the ship Nasha (Naomi Ackie). Still, Mickey 17 isn’t thrilled about being left for dead on a freezing planet with creatures known as Creepers descending on him.
To Mickey 17’s surprise, he survives the encounter, and returns to the ship to discover that there’s already a Mickey 18. This is a big no-no with the cloning technology, punishable by death for both beings. The two have to work out a way to co-exist, which means finding a way to share work, rest, food, and… “affections” from Nasha. Plus they want to save the population of both the ship and the new planet from war-mongering commander Marshall (Mark Ruffalo) and his power-hungry wife Ylfa (Toni Collette). Sorry to introduce these characters as near-afterthoughts, but the movie never does quite find a way to fit them neatly into Mickey’s story.
There’s really only one great thing about “Mickey 17,” but it’s the most important thing, and that’s Pattinson’s relatable everyman (and multiple-man) performance. Funny, endearing, and of course multi-faceted, Pattinson is literally doing the work of many men to earn this movie a recommendation by the skin of its teeth. The rest of the movie is something of a mess with its weird chronology, superfluous subplots, unnecessary screentime for its villains, and pointless ambiguity in a sequence toward the end. The film is based on a book, and maybe certain detours worked better on paper than they do onscreen. Maybe the script should have gone through a few revisions and Mickey-style regenerations.
Grade: B-
“Mickey 17” is rated R for violent content, language throughout, sexual content, and drug material. Its running time is 137 minutes.
Robert R. Garver is a graduate of the Cinema Studies program at New York University. His weekly movie reviews have been published since 2006.
Last Update: Mar 10, 2025 12:15 pm CDT
