From the Academy Award-winning writer/director of Parasite, Bong Joon Ho, comes his next groundbreaking cinematic experience, Mickey 17. The unlikely hero, Mickey Barnes (Robert Pattinson) has found himself in the extraordinary circumstance of working for an employer who demands the ultimate commitment to the job… to die, for a living.
What We Thought:
The first half of Mickey 17 is at least entertaining. There were a couple of things that bothered me that might not bother or even be noticed by others, but overall I was having some fun with it. I enjoyed seeing the different ways Robert Pattinson was dying ala Groundhog Day and The Edge of Tomorrow. It’s well made, looks sharp and it was a solid sci-fi flick.
Then for some reason midway through movie, the tone of the film drastically changes. The laughs are gone while the drama gets heavy handed. The first half explains why Pattinson’s Mickey would choose a job that gets him killed over and over again and reborn through cloning. It makes sense why he would do it and how in the future that cloning technology would be beneficial to space travel. But halfway through it becomes extremely serious. The love story between Mickey and Naomi Ackie’s character becomes a major focus of the plot along with Mark Ruffalo’s White Christian cult like character.
Ruffalo plays a former politician leading the expedition (along with his wife played by Toni Collette) to a new planet. He’s going to populate this new land with colonizers who look like him, but first he needs to wipe out the indigenous inhabitants of this new land. Gee, I wonder what this could be a metaphor for? Between the political white man wanting to kill the creatures of the planet and the unnecessary love triangle I pretty much checked out of the film. It almost feels like two different movies or two stories combined to fill a runtime. Ackie’s Nasha character even changes accents midway through.
I don’t know if I can say that Mickey 17 was disappointing because it had been delayed multiple times and has zero buzz before its release. Despite this being Bong Joon Ho’s follow up to Best Picture winner Parasite and being Pattinson’s first film since The Batman, I haven’t heard anyone really talking about it. The movie shot 2.5 years ago and was supposed to be released in March 2024 so I’m thinking the studio knew it had some issues. I didn’t love Pattinson’s accent in the role, but I thought he was good especially the comedic elements. Bong Joon Ho is known for mixing tones and genres and I tend to love his work, but this film didn’t work for me. I’d rather rewatch The Host or Snowpiercer.
The Nerds Templar 