(Warning: spoilers ahead)
I had high hopes when I saw the trailer for Bong Joon-ho's sci-fi dark comedy 'Mickey 17' starring Robert Pattison. While on a trip to Michigan, I had some time to go see the film Friday night.
'Mickey 17' has an interesting premise: a young man volunteers to be a human guinea pig (called an 'Expendable') on a space exploration vessel. In exchange for subjecting himself to various experiments, he'd be reprinted -- complete with his past memories -- in an endless cycle of death and technological reincarnation. It explores themes of how corporate capitalism can literally chew up and spit out the average man and the ethical bounds of scientific development.
Mickey Barnes (Robert Pattison) and his friend Timo (Steven Yeun) owe money to a loan shark who gets his jollies by watching his defaulted clients die for their debts. Thinking the long arm of debt collection wouldn't extend to deep space, Mickey and Timo sign up for an expedition to colonize the planet Niflheim. Spaces on the ship are limited and in high demand, because the expedition is led by failed politician Kenneth Marshall (Mark Ruffalo) and his wife, Ylfa (Toni Collette).
His willingness to be an Expendable gets Mickey, who otherwise has no discernable talents, on the ship. Once in space, Mickey falls for Nasha (Naomi Ackie), who keeps loving him through each reprinted iteration.
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The best part of this film is Robert Pattison's performance. He's come a long way since his turn as ill-fated 'Harry Potter' character Cedric Diggory and light years from his emo 'Twilight' vampire as Edward Cullen. As the title implicates, there are 17 versions of Mickey, thanks to the trials and tribulations the science team subjects him to. While we don't see all of them, we do get to see a misprinted Mickey 18, a reprint wholly different from his predecessor.
From the voice, to the mannerisms and physicality, Pattison plays two very different, distinct characters.
I haven't read the book on which the movie is based, and I will, because I wonder how the subject matter of the film is approached in the book versus the film. As I said above, the premise is interesting: what are the moral and ethical implications of killing and reprinting a human being? How do we address life and death in a world where death is no longer permanent?
But the film doesn't explore those topics and -- in fact -- it never answers a question posed several times to Mickey himself: what's it like to die?
It doesn't because it can't.
There's also a subplot about an alien species on the planet, demonized by Kenneth Marshall as man-eating. But even the motives behind that aren't explored in any meaningful way.
A big part of what drove the lack of exploration into the interesting premise of the film is the fact the film goes all-in on making Ruffalo's Kenneth Marshall a caricature version of Donald Trump, and that overrides everything else in the film. You can tell when the movie was written at a time when the filmmakers were not only hoping Trump was going to lose the election (they refer to Marshall's 'two lost elections' a few times), but whe Trump was going through the worst of his legal troubles.
For as good as Pattison's performance is, Ruffalo's is so cringe-inducing that it's borderline comical.
Everything about the character -- from the weird pompadour hair to the overly white veneers that make Ruffalo look like he's wearing a mouthguard to his over-the-top delivery -- is awkward and off-putting. Perhaps that was what the filmmakers were going for, because it's clearly a parody of Donald Trump and his supporters (complete with red hats). His obsession with a 'pure white' colony is so on the nose it's painful.
Even Toni Collette, who is often brilliant, is underutilized with motives that aren't clear even through the confusing third act.
When Ruffalo's character meets his fate, it's a relief that we won't have to see his smug face on screen anymore.
The film wraps up with some major girl-bossing in the conclusion. Somehow, Nasha becomes a political leader of the colony, but the film glosses over all of that. She's just politically powerful now for some reason. Another character is outed in the final act as a lesbian with little build-up or reference. None of these character developments are built on in the movie and it runs two and a quarter hours.
The film shows how out-of-touch Hollywood is with the rest of the country and even their consumer base. Their caricature of Trump in the movie does not reflect their real-life criticisms of him; those complaints are not that Trump is a corporatist, but a fascist and a racist. Both of those are not true, either (a guy obsessed with race doesn't select a Vice President with an Indian-American wife and children).
If the film needed a villain, a better choice would have been a Jeff Bezos-style businessman with a corporate finger in every aspect of life.
But ORANGE MAN BAD was the driving force that shoe-horned Ruffalo's character into a film where he not only felt out of place but threw off the entire dynamic of a promising movie.
Aside from Pattison's performance, other actors are largely solid even if their characters aren't adequately fleshed out. The visuals are stunning and, along with the sound editing, made it worth seeing on the big screen.
Given the dearth of good films coming out of Hollywood these days, my standard for a film is: do I regret wasting my time and money on this?
For 'Mickey 17', the answer is no.
It's just a shame they didn't tone down the Trump parody in favor of some meatier sci-fi morality.
I give 'MIckey 17' three of five stars.
