Arts & Culture

Where: In theatres
What: Movie; 2 hours, 17 mins.
When: Now
Genre: Action/Sci-Fi/Comedy
Rating: NNNNN (out of 5)
Why you should watch: For fans of Bong Joon-ho, the deeply interwoven themes of social commentary, human connection and class warfare are nothing new, but this feels like the most accessible of his films — with the bonus treat of seeing Robert Pattinson at his most delightfully weird as an actor.

IMAGINE ROBERT Pattinson’s character from Claire Denis’s grim 2018 High Life (in which death-row inmates are sent on a suicide mission to the nearest black hole in search of alternative energy sources while being subject to experiments in artificial insemination) but more of a himbo and exists in a universe that tilts towards the absurd. That’s Mickey Barnes.

Set in the not-too-distant future, Mickey 17 sees Mickey (Robert Pattinson) living and dying over and over again for the sole benefit of doing grunt work and being experimented on during a capitalist-driven space expedition to colonize new worlds. However, this is not a superhuman character who can never die but a nasally, short-end-of-the-stick, perennially down-on-his-luck man who can’t STOP dying … because he has to make a living.

From director Bong Joon-ho — who previously directed Best Picture-winning Parasite (2019) — Mickey 17 (based on the novel Mickey7 by Edward Ashton) is the story of Mickey Barnes, a man who decides to escape his debts on Earth by taking a job as an “expendable” onboard a colony ship headed for an icy new planet, Niflheim, four-plus years of travel away from all his troubles — or so he thinks.

Expendables, a brand-new subclass of humans with zero human rights, are disposable humans who undergo a procedure to have their bodies cloned and memories continually backed up in order to do the type of work that would otherwise be suicidal. But each time they die, they have the backed-up memories reinserted into a new clone body, ready for the next bout of fatally dangerous work.

The colonists on this journey are led by Kenneth Marshall (Mark Ruffalo, hilariously channelling some kind of Trump-Musk love child), a bumbling failed politician with painful insecurity covered up by blustery bravado, who nonetheless has a highly devoted cult following. He is recruited as the figurehead of the ultra-conservative religious organization (and thinly veiled fascist order) that is funding this intergalactic colonial expedition and is tasked with planting the seeds for a new, “pure” society alongside his enabler wife, Ylfa, played with deliciously unhinged “upper-class Karen” energy by Toni Collette.

Mickey doesn’t look too closely at the fine print when signing up for the only position left on the expedition’s crew — an expendable — thanks to his best friend Timo’s (Steven Yeun) decision to default on a loan, taken in Mickey’s, name from a loan shark who finds his entertainment in watching loan defaulters killed in gruesome ways.

After every gruesome death, he has his previously scanned memories reintroduced into a brand-new clone body, 3D-printed from organic matter produced on the ship. But in between dying, Mickey finds an unexpected purpose when he meets and falls helplessly in love with Nasha (Naomi Ackie), a brilliant, no-nonsense agent (the cops of the ship). He is constantly bemused at her reciprocal love for him, which often presents as a fierce protective streak against the crew members who barely regard him as human.

The pair embarks on a doting, passionate relationship that sustains them both through the hardships of the multi-year space journey and through the early days on the new planet. Nasha is very quickly established as a deeply competent agent with a strong sense of fairness and justice as well as a commitment not to authority figures but to what is ethical. Her compassion and ability to see everyone for who they are is on full display early on: for most of the movie, Nasha is the only person who treats Mickey like a person.

When a new, clearly sentient indigenous species is discovered upon landing on the “empty” ice world Niflheim (creatures reminiscent of Okja’s rotund, sentient hippo pigs, but with tentacles), it is initially considered vermin to be exterminated. But the plot hinges on the discovery of the creatures’ full sentience when they save rather than eat Mickey when he falls (seemingly to his death) into an icy crevasse full of the creatures. His apparent death results in the creation of a duplicate clone, Mickey 18.

When the creatures’ ability to speak in a translatable language, feel emotions and grieve their losses is discovered, lines are drawn between those willing to overlook extreme differences for the sake of empathy and those to whom even other humans are considered less than worthy of life.

This film is a funny, occasionally vicious examination of both mortality and morality in the specific context of colonization, with the characters spanning the range of pseudo-religious fascists on one end (Marshall, Ylfa and their sycophants), the people driven by an innate sense of justice on the other end (Nasha and Mickey) and a wide spectrum in between that ranges from apathy and opportunism (Mickey’s hate-to-love-him frenemy, Timo) to a willingness to be convinced (scientist Dorothy, played by Patsy Ferran).

Mickey 17 boasts a stellar cast of incredibly talented actors leaning all the way into the excesses of this dark comedy: from Ruffalo and Collette channelling the worst WASPy conservative couple you’ve ever met to Yeun making “slimy asshole” look incredibly charming. Ackie’s Nasha is the embodiment of a multifaceted badass with a heart of gold while Pattinson shines as two distinct versions of Mickey Barnes — one a nervous wreck and the other a barely repressed ball of anger.

Clocking in at over two hours long, thanks to excellent pacing and direction, Mickey 17 felt exactly as long as the story needed it to be.

I went into this screening wondering if it was Moon (2009) with extra cast members, but I came out it with appreciation for a beautifully surreal parable about life, death (a LOT of death), love and the ethics (and politics) of the disposability of certain people under capitalism, religious fascism and good old-fashioned bigotry.

I use “parable” here intentionally because there are bucketfuls of religious/fascist symbolism and iconography exhibited by the members of the religious order and baked into the design of everything on the ship, from swastika-adjacent cufflinks to the clasps on standard-issue bras. Not to mention the increasingly militaristic styling of the core antagonist, Marshall, as well as the overt colonial/imperialist atmosphere that only keeps building as the story deepens.

Mickey 17 is a biting satire and social commentary on life, death, love, what makes us human, whose life matters (or doesn’t) and what happens when death itself doesn’t matter because of endlessly recycled chances at life. For fans of Bong, the deeply interwoven themes are nothing new, but this film feels like the most accessible of his films and is appropriately and beautifully surreal in the way it delivers these messages. The added bonus is seeing Pattinson at his most delightfully weird.