Mikey 17

5 outta 5

Writer and director Bong Joon Ho, who won Best Director and Best Picture for Parasite, has a very diverse set of films. He is interested in themes like class struggle, environmental challenges, and settings like sci-fi, post-apocalyptic, action and monsters like his movies The Host, Snowpiercer and Okja. So as wild and wacky as his latest film, Mickey 17, is it is also a return to his thematic and stylistic roots. The movie is a darkly amusing comedic tale with monsters and messy violence and over the top performance choices, for a chaotic, zany sci-fi story. And Mikey 17 has something to say about workers at the bottom rung being so disposable they can be wiped and replaced with ease.

In the future, Mikey (Robert Pattinson) and his buddy Timo (Steve Yuen) escape from the dregs of Earth on a spaceship for a new planet. But the only way that Mickey was able to get on the ship was to sign up to be an “Expendable”. As one, he is given dangerous and often deadly jobs but when he dies, they just print off a new version of him and continue onwards. After four years of space travel he died a bunch of times but found a girlfriend with Nasha (Naomi Ackie), Mikey and co. land on a very icy planet. After he dies a few more times to test the air, Mikey 17 is working for the leaders of the expedition, Kenneth Marshall (Mark Ruffalo) and Ylfa (Toni Collette). Mikey 17 falls into a crevasse and is expected to die at the teeth of the nasty-looking natives the Creepers, but he escapes and makes it back to base. Unfortunately, everyone assumed he was dead and had already printed out Mikey 18. With two Mikeys that makes them Multiples, which is something that is banned and needs to be corrected immediately. But Mikey 18 turns out to be a bit of a jerk while Mikey 17 has a newfound appreciation for life. And things get even worse when some of the Creepers make it onto the base as the larger mama Creeper and her brood threaten to overwhelm them all.

Duo performances with an actor against themselves are fun to watch and Pattinson nails it. He gives the two Mikeys a distinct style, with 17 exhausted with his existence of constantly dying. 18 is snarky, he doesn’t have time for 17’s BS, and eventually wants revenge against Kenneth who is sending Mikey on his circuitous route of eternal life and death. Even there are different vocal inflections between the two of them, as 18 sounds a bit harsher. When 17 is poisoned at a fancy dinner with Kenneth, he is oddly accommodating. Mostly because he doesn’t want to be found out that he’s a Multiple.

The set-up for why being a Multiple is bad is an entertaining flashback to Earth where people had scientific and religious questions about how to deal with the situation. Then it is revealed that one of the founding doctors of the cloning technique was a mass murderer who uses his own Multiple to get away with various crimes. After that, Multiples had to be eliminated. The premise of disposable worker people is engrained in the film’s narrative, as Mikey’s various blasé reactions to dying, and the way people incessantly ask him about what it’s like to die, show how dehumanizing it is at the bottom rung. When a different worker is killed, Marshall just rails on Mikey saying that as an Expendable, it is his job to die.

Ruffalo and Collette swing wide in their performances, but it is always fun to see Ruffalo play one of his various nasty creeps, as Kenneth loves to pontificate. And when it seems that the Creeper monsters are closing in, he takes one of the infant Creepers and hangs it upside down, even getting Nasha to jump at it and save it from falling into oblivion by grabbing a rope with her teeth. Collette as his wife has this really strange obsession with sauces which makes her more of an upper-class twit, and when Marshall is going to shoot Mikey 17 she freaks out that he may damage their rug. Ackie as the girlfriend gets in some good moments, like when she is delighted she has two Mickey’s to herself, or when she tears into Marshall about how they are the alien invaders on this planet. Yuen as Mikey’s “buddy” Timo is rather scummy, immediately betraying Mikey if it seems like it’ll save his own ass. And when it seems like Timo is going to get caught, he breaks down into a blubbering weenie. Also the way that Timo just casually leaves Mikey 17 to die, as it would be too much effort to rescue him, and then creepily asks “What does dying feel like?” to the broken Mikey 17 makes him pretty despicable.

Bong Joon Ho is an excellent craftsman and the movie looks spectacular. Visually, the look is a bit grimy but that works for the tone. And there’s a showdown with the mob of Creepers which features a few really neat twists in the relationship between human and “monster”. Overall, Mikey 17 plays with a lot of things that Bong Joon Ho has always done in a trippy sci-fi and darkly comedic package.