I had an interesting experience watching Mile 22 a couple of days ago. I walked into the cinema partially blind — all I knew was that the film’s Peter Berg’s and stars Marky Mark (the two previously worked together on Lone Survivor, Deepwater Horizon, and Patriots Day, all films I am genuinely fond of). For whatever reason, I didn’t catch a single trailer, didn’t come across (or at least, didn’t pay attention to) a single poster, didn’t scan through IMDb to see who the supporting casts are and I didn’t even read the synopsis. And I gotta say, it was a refreshing experience.
Opportunities like this are rare for me these days. Most of my time is spent skimming through dozens upon dozens of movie news stories and when I’m not doing that, I’m on film Twitter. I have no idea how the entire Mile 22 marketing campaign (was there even a marketing campaign?) flew by me but I’m glad it did. I sometimes miss the days where I would just buy a ticket to a random ass movie and not know what I’m gonna get.
Perhaps it is this rejuvenating experience (sounds dramatic, but it’s true) that made Mile 22 far more enjoyable than it had any right to be. It’s baffling just how much this movie gets wrong considering its helmer has been on a hot streak. Look, Peter Berg is no Oliver Stone and maybe never will be. But since he began his partnership with Mark Wahlberg, he has consistently given us mid-range budgeted action/crime-thrillers that are fun, compelling and hella patriotic — Berg makes movies that’ll make you proud to be an American even if you’re not an American.
But Mile 22 is a big miss, playing like a two-dollar version of The Raid with famous Hollywood people, more than anything else. We follow James Silva (Mark Wahlberg), and his team of elite top-secret American intelligence officers (famous faces include Lauren Cohan and Ronda Rousey) who are so badass, they make GI Joes look like back-alley punks, as they try to smuggle a police officer by the name of Li Noor, who has valuable information, out of Indonesia. Li Noor is Iko Uwais, who when first popped up on screen, I went, “Heck yeah!! We’re getting some ass whooping on top on ass-kicking today babeh!” I’m one of those macho guys who love watching movies with a ton of hyper-stylized action sequences where men and women get their shoulders dislocated, only to pop it back into place and smash their enemies’ faces into walls. I’m also one of those macho guys who cry for mommy whenever I get a stomach ache.
Anyway, had the movie played out as straightforwardly as its basic premise, it would’ve been far more compelling. This should’ve been a picture where Mark Wahlberg, Lauren Cohan, Ronda Rousey and Iko Uwais try to get from point A to point B, while brutally ripping the nuts off corrupt Indonesian cops and gangsters who are trying to stop them. Sure the whole point A to point B shit sounds exactly like The Raid and countless of other testosterone-fueled action bonanzas you’ve seen before, but if it’s executed well, who cares?
Sadly Mile 22 is convoluted. There’s a mystery — who is Li Noor? There’s some stuff about Russian terrorists. And also some stuff about missing nuclear weapons. All of which sounds cool in concept, except none of it intertwines seamlessly. There is a twist that’s supposed to make you feel like how you felt watching Christopher Plummer say “the greatest trick the devil ever pulled is convincing the world he doesn’t exist” in The Usual Suspects. But it’s meaningless because the mystery isn’t what you’re focused on nor interested in. You don’t care about any of these characters enough to give a damn about the bigger mystery. And you don’t care because Peter Berg clearly doesn’t give two hoots. He cares about the skull-crushing and blasting two billion bullets through walls and car windows and people’s heads. I would just blame the movie’s failings on debut screenwriter Lea Carpenter had the action set pieces gave me erections.
The problem is, even the action sequences aren’t anything to scream about either. You don’t bring someone like Iko Uwais into the fold only to have poorly put together fight scenes consisting of close-ups, Resident Evil style shaky cams and an infinite amount of cuts per second. Shaky cam can be an art form in itself, as proven by Paul Greengrass with his Bourne movies. There, shaky cam is stylistically used to generate a feeling of disorientation. Here, like in most cases, shaky cam is used to mask one’s inability to properly frame hand-to-hand combat set pieces. There is a scene in the US Embassy where Li Noor takes on a couple of ass-kicking doctors which leaves all three of them in a pool of blood. It’s a fun sequence, but all throughout I couldn’t help but wonder how much better it would’ve been even if the camera was just stationary, placed on a tripod.
There are no characters in this film; just one-dimensional vessels with rigid personalities. But the highly capable actors make these characters work… to a degree. James Silva suffers from an ADHD-type disorder without any of the nuances. But I thoroughly enjoyed Mark Wahlberg’s endless, rapid-fire monologue, despite some of the lines being a completely and absolutely WTF — at one point Wahlberg’s James Silva angrily screams “no birthday cake for you!” to one of his teammates. I laughed out loud. Lauren Cohan’s Alice Kerr is going through a divorce. But that’s nothing more than a cheap fakeout in character development. It doesn’t actually give us an insight into who she really is, nor does it do anything to make us care for her more. But if you like her in The Walking Dead, you’ll enjoy seeing her here. Ronda Rousey is the same Ronda Rousey you’ve seen in every movie she’s in thus far.
Peter Berg is a good director. I found Lone Survivor and Patriots Day intriguing and Deepwater Horizon was one of my favourite movies in 2016. But Mile 22 is a swing and a miss. This had the potential to be THE action movie of 2018. Instead, it’s a forgettable mess. But I’m not going to lie. I didn’t hate it. Going in blind and discovering what this movie is about as it unfolds while skulls and bones get crushed turned out to be a surprisingly therapeutic experience.
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