Mickey 17 (2025) - 8/10

The year is 2054 on the planet Niflheim. Mickey (Robert Pattinson) is part of a colony, but not a particularly valued one. He’s an Expendable, he’s sort of indestructible. With a reprintable body, getting his memories uploaded into a new body after every morally questionable death. It’s his job. He’s used to it but sick of being little more than a lab rat. The churn of Mickey’s is about to hit a snag though, when Mickey 18 is born into the world, before Mickey 17 is dead. He’s here we learn because he’s desperate. Things weren’t going well on earth, nothing much was. When Tim Key is eager to leave the planet, you know it’s time to go. Anyway he applies for the expedition and the job, with no other viable options and not much of a clue what he’s signed up for. It’s all sounds cold, heartless science fiction but it’s not. It’s darkly comic. Ok it is cold too, but Mickeys narration is funny and tragic, he’s instantly lovable. The opposite can be said for Kenneth ‘Trump’ Marshall (Mark Ruffalo) and his wife Ylfa (Toni Collette). They are the unscrupulous, evangelical, white supremacist, dictatorship power couple chartering this new colony mission to an unpopulated frozen planet, rife with unknown danger, hence the need for Mickey. He’s the canary in the coal mine. It’s a good cast, but this is Pattinson’s show and he’s utterly brilliant. Even more so when there’s multiples of him running around. Where his 17 incarnation is lovable, it turns out 18 has a bit of a temper. Mickey’s world is turned upside down, but maybe 18 can help him break the negative spiral he’s stuck in. Especially as Marshall’s plans reveal how dark and creepy he really is. It’s a bloody marvellous romp, quite heavy on the blood and disarmingly deft with the romp. It’s not at all silly though. It’s inventive, fast paced, with an engaging story arc, that hits every gear change perfectly. Mickey starts out pretty dumb, but as 17 lives longer, he starts to understand his place in the world, the intensions of those around him and not just the people, but the tardigrade-like creatures that inhabit Niflheim. On the surface, it’s big budget action adventure, but you don’t have to dig far to find the cutting satire. It’s a gripping mix of the bleakness of humanity, spliced with just enough hope to see you through to the end and I loved it!

8/10