JunkDror

POV: Your job is to perpetually die and you will still need to beg your boss for a livable wage and basic human dignity. 

Mickey 17 is an unsettling addition to the science-fiction genre, one that director Bong Joon Ho uses to discuss corrupted politics, colonization, and overconsumption in a jokingly futuristic way. Like his previous work, Parasite (2019), Mickey 17 is characteristic of Bong Joon Ho’s genre-mixing style, never failing to get a chuckle out of his audience even in the darkest of times. 

The film follows a wimpy Mickey Barnes (Robert Pattinson), who has found himself in some money trouble with a mafia boss that is kinky for bloodshed and will go to the ends of the Earth for vengeance. Cleverly, Mickey escapes to space on a research expedition to colonize the ice world Niflheim as an “Expendable:” a disposable human who can die and be reprinted with most memories intact. The space colony he lives in is run by loser politician (yet weirdly idolized) Kenneth Marshall (Mark Ruffalo), who has a knack for empty promises and self-centered motives. Although the “corrupted politician” trope is growing old, Marshall’s annoying cadence and nuisance of a personality creates a visceral irritation that helps Bong get away with the cliché.

While young people make up most of its inhabitants, the space colony is anything but youthful. It is grey and bleak, sucking out the life of adolescent wonder by taking advantage of their naivety to brainwash them into militant soldiers. This means following Marshall’s orders, gun firing assassinations, calorie-counting, and definitely no sex. The only sparks of passion are noticed between Mickey and his secret lover, Nasha (Naomi Ackie). To her, he is not Mickey 1, 2, 17, or 25; just Mickey Barnes. And when you are born to die, such a sentiment makes the living hours all the more precious.

Unfortunately, most people on the ship devalue Mickey’s life to a simple contribution to science. He gets exposed to radiation, freezing temperatures, fatal viruses, and dangerous injections by surprise, never knowing whether they are to help his condition or end him. There is an astute numbness that develops within the surrounding characters the more he is reprinted and raised like an Okja-style (2017) pig for slaughter. Almost as cold and heartless as Mickey’s compostable body after every mission, the film distressingly dehumanizes him in a way that is so subtle you ignorantly anticipate his death alongside his desensitized peers.

All hell really breaks loose, when a “multiple” of Mickey is accidentally printed: Mickey 18. The law prohibits two iterations of Expendables to be alive at the same time because discrepancies in behaviors cannot be traced back to personality differences nor scientific misprints. However, the storyline starts to feel a bit convoluted when you realize that on top of the Pattinson twins and politician antagonist, there is a business partner turned frenemy, illegal drug deals, homewrecking, sonically gifted aliens, and the politician’s wife’s obsession with sauce? You leave wondering if a run time of two hours and seventeen minutes was truly necessary. 

Most interestingly, Pattinson performs Mickey 17’s fragility and Mickey 18’s aggression with a fluctuating ease that embraces the elaborate plot and maintains intrigue throughout the film. As his character(s) simultaneously faces the external pressures of such a taxing job and internal struggle to make sense of his humanness (or lack thereof), we are brought along this quest to find an answer to the question everyone keeps asking, “What is it like to die?” Regrettably, if you are hoping to receive a concrete image of death, you will have to wait and see for yourself six feet underground.

Even more so, Mickey 17 pushes us to explore the sacredness of dying and the absurdity of living. Especially when our mortality defines our existence, how tolerant do you become of its impermanence? Why place any importance on the living experience with the promise of resurrection, rebirth, or an afterlife? Evidently, it is up to the viewer’s discretion to make such conclusions about their lives; and while it is a thoughtful premise, you may not get to it under all the intergalactic imperialism and human cloning.