By Jason Osiason

Mickey 17 starts with a concept that could have been something special. Mickey Barnes, played by Robert Pattinson, is an expendable, a cloned worker on a distant human colony, sent on missions too dangerous for anyone else. Every time one Mickey dies, a new clone wakes up with most of his memories intact. The story follows him as he starts to question his role in this system. After one of his deaths, something changes. His replacement wakes up, but the last Mickey is still alive, setting off a chain of problems that no one seems ready to deal with.

From there the plot stretches in a lot of directions. Mickey tries to survive while hiding from the colony leadership. The governor, played by Mark Ruffalo, wants him eliminated to keep the system clean. The corporation behind the colony has its own motives. Meanwhile, Mickey keeps crossing paths with various faction: rebels, scientists, politicians while trying to make sense of who he is and what his life means. There are layers about cloning ethics, environmental destruction, and exploitation. But instead of pulling these ideas together, the film keeps adding more without really paying them off.

The second half is where the cracks show. The pacing starts to drag. The story keeps hinting at big twists or resolutions, but they either fizzle out or feel repetitive. It becomes hard to tell when or how the film is going to wrap up, and by the end it feels like it’s been circling the same ideas for too long.

Pattinson does everything he can to give the story weight. He makes Mickey’s confusion and desperation feel real. Ruffalo goes over the top as the governor, turning what could have been a real threat into more of a cartoon. Toni Collette’s performance feels stuck between menace and farce. The side characters who seem drawn to Mickey romantically or otherwise add to the confusion, because the film never makes sense of what those connections mean or why they matter.

Visually the film has style. The colony, the tech, and the alien world look great. There are flashes of cleverness in the humor and some tension in the early going. But as the film drags on, it loses its focus. The ideas that seemed rich at first get buried under too much plot, too many half-explored threads, and a final act that struggles to find its way out.

Mickey 17 has ambition, and there are pieces of a stronger film here. But it ends up feeling like it’s chasing too many things at once and never figures out what matters most. [B-]