Mile 22

I’ve enjoyed the Peter Berg/Mark Wahlberg team-up that began with Lone Survivor and continued with Deepwater Horizon and Patriot’s Day so I was optimistic about them teaming up once again for Mile 22. Throw in The Raid’s Iko Uwais and now you have me excited. Unfortunately the resulting film is a mixed bag of egotistical dialogue from Wahlberg paired with expertly choreographed but awkwardly shot fight scenes. The action is entertaining, but everything else lacks far behind.

Jimmy Silva (Mark Wahlberg) leads a team of highly trained covert operatives who, with the help of communication team called Overwatch, execute top secret missions for the government. Their latest is to safely escort Li Noor (Iko Uwais), a valuable asset who has knowledge of where nuclear explosives are located, from the US Embassy in the fictional Southeast Asian city of Indocarr to an extraction point. It’ll be a dangerous 22 miles as everyone, from corrupt government police to foreign assassins, is out to kill him.

Mile 22 gets off to a rough start by introducing Wahlberg’s Silva as this hyper-intelligent and elite operative who grew up different than all of the other kids, basically implying that he was born to become this CIA special weapon. Despite the film telling us how smart he is, all Silva seems to do is yell at everyone and fire his gun. The first 20 minutes or so is mostly this rapid-fire dialogue of Wahlberg’s nonsensical ranting. It’s exhausting to listen to, like a toddler crying when he doesn’t get his way. He's joined by The Walking Dead's Lauren Cohan whose character Alice is also balancing motherhood on top of being a secret agent risking her life on a daily basis. Of course her family doesn't know the details of what she does, which is why she's contstantly arguing with her ex-husband over seeing her daughter. They use this weird monitoring device that keeps track of all messages and cuts out any foul langage, which only further causes conflict for her. It's an unnecessary part of the film that could have been cut completely out of an already trim 94 minute running time. The team is rounded out by Ronda Rousey and Carlo Alban but their screentime is limited. Thankfully the film gets better when Iko Uwais shows up and finally brings the action to this action thriller.

The action scenes for Mile 22 are some of the most intense and brutal fight sequences I’ve seen in a long time. If you’ve seen The Raid than you already know the kind of skills Uwais brings to any action film. There’s a physicality to his fights that are unrivaled in Hollywood today. Mile 22 highlights his talents, but doesn’t quite take full advantage of them due to some poor camera work and a mass of rapid cuts that make the action more difficult to follow. Uwais is no doubt kicking all kinds of ass throughout the film, and there are some downright gruesome feats he pulls off, but scenes could have been so much better had the camera just pulled back a little and stayed still. Given Uwais’s talents, I don’t see why this wasn’t possible.

If it were not for Iko Uwais, Mile 22 would have been a completely forgettable addition to the action genre. His fights absolutely steal the film and do a good job at pushing out Mark Wahlberg’s grating performance. The film leaves things open ended for a potential sequel, but honestly, unless both the writing and cinematography vastly improve, there’s not much to get excited about.