Review: “Mile 22” (2018)

This past weekend was a holiday weekend for many of us on my side of the pond cause we got to celebrate Labor Day. There is an urge to hit the road and live life to the fullest or go to the beach or do some outdoor activity or have an adventure but instead I decided to catch up in movies cause I am way behind so I decided to go to the cinema twice and let the Ferris Bueller shit to somebody else.

The first movie I saw was “Mile 22” and it’s the fourth collaboration between director Peter Berg and Mark Wahlberg. The first was “Lone Survivor”

Then “Deepwater Horizon”

& “Patriots Day”

Since I have liked their previous three movies together, “Mile 22” co-starring Iko Uwais from “The Raid” was on my “To Watch” list.

 

This movie is getting bad reviews overall but nowadays if critics even smell that the film might lean a little bit to the right they completely take a big ol’ shit on it. So I was curious to see for myself how this film was.

Now having seen the movie, I can say that I didn’t hate it, I wasn’t bored by it but at the same time it felt like it could have been better and it felt like a missed opportunity.

Mark Wahlberg stars as CIA operative James Silva who leads a paramilitary squad on an urgent dangerous mission that involves transporting a foreign intelligence asset by the name of Li Noor ( played by Uwais)  from an American embassy in Southeast Asia to an airfield for extraction 22 miles away. Wahlberg & Comp. must race against time as the city’s police, street gangs & military, all want Noor.

I liked that the director took adult approach to the material and didn’t make it “kid friendly” like so many action films nowadays. Even though Lauren Cohan and Ronda Rousey are in the movie as part of Wahlberg’s crew, they are not “Super Vaginas Unite” & “Go Girl Power Go” and Cohan in particular has a fight scene with a guy that was good & believable & yet interestingly enough Ronda Rousey doesn’t have a big fight sequence.

Mark Wahlberg here plays a character that reminded me a little bit of the character he played in “The Departed” because he was such a straightforward asshole. During the opening credits you get his backstory and it’s revealed that he’s a genius and even though he doesn’t do anything “genius” for the rest of the movie he’s kind of interesting.

Some say that the plot was too convoluted but where I do feel the director Peter Berg really fucked-up was in his directing of the action sequences. You got Iko Uwais and when he finally gets to do martial arts you shake the camera like your cinematographer is having a fucking seizure during an earthquake?!?! Another fucking movie that could have been better if the fucking cinematographer just put the fucking camera on a fucking God Damn Mother Fucking Tripod!!! You got one of the best in the business doing action sequences and doing physical stunts and you shoot the fucking scenes like your cinematographer is participating on a “who can masturbate the fastest?” contest. Seriously directors need to stop this shit like now…I mean it..seriously…enough.

Without giving anything away this movie ends up on a note that leads you to believe that they are going to make a sequel, however the film felt like it lacked a third Act, the story’s ending felt abrupt.

“Mile 22” is not a terrible movie, it’s an okay film and you just get frustrated by what could have been had they just done a couple of things differently. Peter Berg is a good director and all good filmmakers stumble from time to time. So even though this movie is not a complete mess & it’s an okay entertaining action movie, you know by his previous work that he’s capable of much better things. And if they do make a sequel to this movie (which I wouldn’t mind because the story needs closure and we did not get it in this movie) here’s hoping they just put the camera on a fucking tripod.

6/10