"Mickey 17," the latest cinematic truffle to be snuffled up from the dirt of speculative fiction, begins with a kind of raffish glee that suggests director Bong Joon-ho has been sneaking peeks at his own back catalogue and decided to give us a greatest-hits remix.
The premise—a disposable colonist dying repeatedly for the greater good—has a crisp, mordant edge, and Bong wields it like a scalpel, slicing through the pomposity of space-opera tropes with the glee of a chef filleting a particularly pompous fish. The first half is a sprightly affair, a sort of intergalactic vaudeville where Robert Pattinson, as the titular Mickey, proves once again that he can do more with a raised eyebrow than most actors can with a soliloquy. His performance is a masterclass in controlled lunacy—imagine a man who’s been told he’s expendable so many times he’s started to believe it’s a compliment. Pattinson skitters through the film’s early stretches like a caffeinated ferret, all twitchy charm and deadpan despair, and you can’t help but root for him as he’s cloned, killed, and cloned again in a loop of existential slapstick. It’s "Groundhog Day" with a body count, and for a while, it’s an absolute hoot.
The visuals are sharp, the pacing is brisk, and the whole thing hums along with the kind of dark, playful energy that makes you forgive the odd plot hole or two. You’re too busy chuckling at Pattinson’s latest demise—splatted by a malfunctioning pod, or perhaps incinerated in a way that suggests the special-effects team had a grudge against him—to care about the finer points of narrative coherence.
And then, alas, the second half arrives, like a guest who’s overstayed their welcome and started raiding the fridge. The film, having exhausted its initial burst of invention, decides it’s time to get serious, and in waddles Mark Ruffalo as a colonial administrator who’s less a character and more a megaphone for political satire so broad it could be seen from orbit.
Ruffalo’s turn as a blatant Trump expy—complete with a comb-over that looks like it’s plotting its own escape and a penchant for barking nonsensical orders—is the kind of heavy-handed caricature that makes you wonder if Bong lost a bet. Where Pattinson’s Mickey is a study in subtlety, Ruffalo’s tyrant is a sledgehammer to the skull, all bluster and no nuance. It’s as if someone decided the film needed a villain so cartoonish that Wile E. Coyote would tell him to tone it down.
The plot, which had been gambolling along like a lamb in spring, promptly collapses under the weight of this new agenda. What was once a nimble satire about survival and identity morphs into a clunky parable about authoritarianism, complete with speeches that sound like they were cribbed from a protest placard. The energy drains away, the jokes dry up, and you’re left with a film that’s less "Parasite" and more "Punchline," staggering towards a conclusion that feels both inevitable and oddly unearned.
Pattinson does his best to keep things afloat, but even he can’t save a script that’s decided it’s more interested in preaching than entertaining. The production is undeniably grand and expensive, evident in its visually striking yet occasionally excessive scenes. The film often gives off a sense of familiarity-as if we've seen these themes before. The idea for example that we are the real aliens and "monsters" is hardly new, and at times, the script leans too heavily on familiar concepts explored already by many movies.
In the end, "Mickey 17" is a film of two halves—one a sparkling little gem, the other a lump of coal masquerading as social commentary. Pattinson shines, Ruffalo flounders, and Bong, for all his talent, seems to have forgotten that a satire works best when it doesn’t feel like a lecture. It’s not a total wash—those first 45 minutes are worth the price of admission alone—but by the time the credits roll, you’re left with the nagging sense that this could have been a classic, if only it hadn’t tried so hard to be important.