Quick Description:
Directed by Bong Joon-ho (the mind behind Academy Award-winner “Parasite”), this new take on sci-fi brings forward fresh themes and political commentary, along with plenty of action and laughs. In the near future, a down-on-his-luck man named Mickey (Robert Pattinson) enlists to become an “Expendable” on a failed senator’s expedition to create his own nation in space. Mickey’s daily routine becomes simple: perform dangerous tasks, sometimes die, be reuploaded and reprinted, and do it again.
Plot:
Mickey is presumed dead after a dangerous mission, so they reprint him. The problem is this 17th printed version of Mickey is very much alive. Now there are two Mickeys: Mickey 17 and Mickey 18. According to ship laws, they must both be destroyed due to their duplication. Mickey’s relationship with himself (internally and with his duplicate), the system and those around him are challenged as chaos erupts with the local life-forms and the dictator-like leader of the ship, Kenneth Marshall.
Review: 7/10!
Pretty good movie but nothing extraordinary.
Plot: 8/10
The plot was original – as original as it gets for being based on a book. The balance of action, comedy and self-reflection worked well. The political themes surrounding Mark Ruffalo’s character Kenneth Marshall effectively represented an overbearing political figure, displaying both comedic and darker authoritarian themes. While sci-fi often recycles and rebrands content, this movie offered fresh takes and new material, which was refreshing for a genre defined by repeating plot points.
Visuals: 7/10
The movie looked great. The CGI was excellent with no major flaws. The cinematography (by Darius Khondji) was clean and sharp. The effect of having two Mickeys on screen interacting was seamless. Pattinson reached out and grabbed his double multiple times, and the technique never crossed my mind – it looked that good. However, it wasn’t very original, with fast-paced action and CGI fighting we’ve seen in many films before. While enjoyable, it wasn’t groundbreaking. Today’s visual effects standards are high due to available technology, and while “Mickey 17” met these standards, it wasn’t extraordinary.
Cast: 8/10
Robert Pattinson played a character we haven’t seen him portray before. Coming off his recent success as Batman, the shy and relatively plain “Mickey” character is a complete reversal. Additionally, he acted in scenes with himself – quite impressive work.
Aside from Pattinson, Naomi Ackie was fantastic! She played Mickey’s confident police officer significant other. She was charismatic, passionate, and her performance was great!
Other notable strong performances came from Anamaria Vartolomei, Toni Collette and Mark Ruffalo. Steven Yeun was also in this film but, honestly, it wasn’t his best performance – he has done much better in recent projects such as “Nope” and “Invincible.” That said, the aforementioned actors were strong and brought a lot to the film. There were no major errors or weak links. It was very good, but like other aspects of “Mickey 17,” nothing extraordinary.
