Movie Review – Mickey 17
Director: Bong Joon-ho
Starring: Robert Pattinson, Mark Ruffalo, Toni Collette, Naomi Ackie
Year: 2025
Bong Joon-ho made a movie about clones. Of course he did. After Parasite won everything he could have made literally any movie and the studios would have funded it. He chose to make weird sci-fi about a guy who gets killed repeatedly for the good of humanity.
And it’s great. Obviously. Because Bong Joon-ho doesn’t know how to make bad movies.
Mickey 17 is based on a book called Mickey7 by Edward Ashton. The premise: in the future, space colonization requires “expendables” — workers who take on dangerous missions and die, then get reprinted with their memories restored. Mickey is one of these expendables. He’s been killed and reprinted sixteen times when the movie starts. Then something goes wrong and suddenly there are two Mickeys and that’s a problem because they’re only supposed to have one.
Pattinson plays both Mickeys and the difference between them is fascinating. Mickey 17 is the original — beaten down, resigned to his role, just trying to survive another day. Mickey 18 is the reprint — fresher, angrier, not yet broken by the system. Watching Pattinson differentiate these two versions of the same person is acting at the highest level. This is why he’s the best of his generation. He disappears.
The world-building is. Look. It’s Bong. The colony ship is grimy and class-stratified because of course it is. The leadership is corrupt and petty because of course they are. The native creatures on the ice planet are simultaneously terrifying and sympathetic because Bong always makes you feel for the monsters. There’s a dark comedy running through everything because Bong can’t help himself.
Mark Ruffalo plays the colony’s administrator and he’s doing this thing where he’s pathetic and dangerous at the same time. Like a middle manager with too much power. Toni Collette is his wife and political partner and she brings that same unhinged energy she brought to Hereditary. Naomi Ackie plays Mickey’s love interest and she’s the heart of the movie — the one person who sees him as a human being instead of a renewable resource.
The movie is asking questions about labor. About identity. About what we owe each other and what systems owe us. It’s asking whether a copy of a person is still that person. Whether being replaceable means being worthless. These are not subtle themes but Bong makes them entertaining because he understands that movies need to be fun first.
The action sequences are wild. There’s a chase through the colony ship that involves maintenance tunnels and garbage chutes and at one point a cafeteria. Bong shoots action like a madman — too close, too chaotic, cutting at weird moments — and somehow it works. It shouldn’t work but it does.
Complaints. Minor ones. The pacing in the middle section drags a bit while setting up the third act. Some of the political satire is less sharp than Bong’s Korean work — maybe something gets lost when he’s making fun of American politics instead of Korean politics. And the ending is maybe ten minutes longer than it needs to be.
But these are quibbles. Mickey 17 is Bong Joon-ho doing what Bong Joon-ho does. Making genre movies that are actually about something. Using spectacle to deliver social commentary. Creating moments that make you laugh and think and feel queasy all at once.
He’s still got it.
Thank god.
My rating: ★★★★☆
