‘Mickey 17’: Robert Pattinson Turns Death Into A Full-Time Job [Review]

“Hey Mickey, what’s it feel like to die?”

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[Spoilers ahead.]

Coming from one of the most talented and renowned auteurs of our time, Mickey 17 is Bong Joon Ho’s latest concoction of thriller, social commentary, sci-fi, romance, and humour, all rolled into one.

The film is a blast to watch on the big screen. Even with the 2-hour-17-minute runtime, it never feels draggy.

Joon Ho is probably most famous for the brilliant Parasite. While that might still be his best work yet, Mickey 17 is most similar to two of his other films, Snowpiercer and Okja.

Mickey 17 is set in the year 2054 and kicks off with a Snowpiercer-style take on class struggles, but then it leans more into Okja territory by bringing in The Creepers – worm-like but actually harmless creatures.

It’s the actors that hold this film together, amid the beautiful visuals.

Robert Pattinson is remarkable as Mickey Barnes: appearing both as Mickey 17 and 18 in the film. HIs distinctive facial expressions and Adam Sandler-like vocal intonations make Mickey stand out despite dying again and again.

After a failed business venture with his useless friend Timo (Steven Yeun) who convinces him that “macarons will be bigger than burgers”, Mickey and Timo have to flee Earth to avoid getting killed by loan sharks.

In a very ironic move, Mickey doesn’t read the fine print and signs up to be an “Expendable” aboard a spaceship run by Kenneth Marshall (Mark Ruffalo), a congressman-turned-power-hungry cult leader who’s very obviously a parody of Donald Trump.

Marshall and his sauce-obsessed wife, Ylfa (Toni Collette), have their sights set on colonising what he believes to be the pristine, uninhabited planet of Nilfheim to establish a “pure white race”.

As the ship’s designated “Expendable,” Mickey’s the unfortunate test subject for viruses and other dangers, suffering brutal deaths on the job only to be reprinted in a physically identical form each time.

He finds a twisted sense of fulfilment and purpose through these sacrifices and in his bond with security agent Nasha (Naomi Ackie), who loves him through every one of his rebirths.

The movie keeps the science pretty light for a futuristic story, but it does feature a high-tech printer that prints Mickeys on demand and a portable translator thingy for communicating with The Creepers that, according to Ylfa, look like “croissants covered in sh**”.

“Yeah, I’m afraid.”

It’s illegal for Expendables to have ‘multiples’, but due to a stock checking error, Mickey 18 was printed while 17 was still alive.

Different Mickeys have different dominant personalities. 18 is like 17’s shadow self – a darker, sinister, more impulsive and bloodthirsty Mickey.

Everyone Mickey meets asks him what it’s like to die and you’d expect him to have a clear, quick answer by now. But despite him having lots of practice, his fear of death never dies. Even with Mickey 18’s “I’m-not-afraid-of-anything” demeanor, when he comes face-to-face with death, he admits that he’s afraid.

“It’s all punishment.”

Death haunts Mickey Barnes – not just because he has to do it again and again, but because Mickey 17 still blames himself for his mother’s death when he was a little boy. He pushed a ‘red button’ in the car that he believes caused her to crash.

Even though Mickey 18 explains it was a car malfunction and has nothing to do with the red button, Mickey’s cycle of grief is blatantly obvious through his cyclical death and rebirth.

As he tries to grapple with his guilt and come to terms with his current state of existence, he believes that everything that’s happening to him now is “punishment” for his childish ways.

In a fitting end to this loop, Mickey 17 gets handed a big red button to push to blow up the Expendable-printer and says to himself: “It’s okay for me to be happy.”

Disposable lives

As with most of Joon Ho’s films, Mickey 17 is heavy on social commentary. This one focuses more on the objectification of human beings, and mirrors the treatments of refugees and marginalised communities not only in the U.S. but around the globe.

Mickey essentially becomes a lab rat, women are regarded based on their fertility, and instead of trying to live in harmony with The Creepers, the orang asal of Nilfheim, Marshall’s trying to get rid of them and Ylfa wants their tails to make sauce.

“Sauce is the litmus test of civilisation.”

Mickey 17 is very well-made, entertaining, and is unmistakably a Bong Joon Ho movie. His prints are all over the film. Joon Ho’s brilliance at weaving satire and heavy topics is what makes Mickey 17 so worth the watch.

There were some parts of the film that risked feeling slightly disconnected and compartmentalised. But the more I thought about the movie after watching it, the more I could understand why it felt that way – the absurdity of the story itself allows for its characters to be so out of their minds that their behaviour doesn’t have to make sense to us.