Mile 22 is a fascinatingly terrible movie, which means it's just slightly better than an unambiguously bad one. The latest collaboration between director Peter Berg and star Mark Wahlberg is a masterclass in indecipherable mayhem, one that has already gained a certain level of notoriety for its downright nonsensical editing. It tries so very hard to be relevant and current, featuring an audio quote from Donald Trump, a joke about Steven Bannon, and what appears to be an overarching metaphor for Russian meddling in the 2016 election. In addition to those peculiar choices, this action vehicle boasts Wahlberg at his most ridiculously over-the-top, accompanied by a strange noir framework that doesn't click until the final minutes and a plot full of inconsequential and exhausting violence. Don't let any of my attempts at nuance fool you- Mile 22 is flat-out awful.
For all its infinite faults, Berg is trying to say something here, but I just don't think he has the slightest idea of what that something is. Berg and screenwriter Lea Carpenter recycle dozens of ideas from far superior movies, only to teeter on the edge of finding something original and profound. Yes, we know war is ambiguous and elite soldiers are trained from birth. You have to bring something more than that to the table. So while Berg clearly has his mind on issues of modern warfare and the blurred lines that come with it, good luck finding anything consistently compelling in this non-stop spectacle of ultra-violence.
Wahlberg plays Jimmy Silva, a task force leader who has been raised to be the most efficient soldier possible. He works for the U.S. government, but he's most comfortable during his Overwatch missions. When an Overwatch mission begins, operatives are working independently, no longer existing under the banner of the United States. As the film begins, Silva and his fellow Overwatch team members- Alice (Lauren Cohan), Sam (Ronda Rousey), and William (Carlo Alban)- are taking down a house rigged with explosives by Russian terrorists. In the process, they kill a number of people, including a teenage kid. It's brutal, but this is what Overwatch does.
Cut to a few months later. In fictional Indocarr City (for a movie so concerned with realism, this is a funny thing to make up), a large amount of radioactive cesium has disappeared, which would be enough to make five cities uninhabitable. Double agent Li Noor (The Raid's Iko Uwais) shows up at the doorstep of the U.S. embassy, claiming he has the code to a key that would give American operatives the locations of the cesium. Noor wants asylum to the U.S., and after a couple of close calls within the embassy, the Americans grant his request. Overwatch is activated, and they'll need to evacuate the critical asset over a stretch of 22 miles. It won't be easy, especially when nobody really knows the truth about what's happening.
I have to say, this new sub-genre of "gifted killer" movies fascinates me. This little trend started with The Equalizer, which features Denzel Washington as a precise and perceptive government assassin. Things took a deep dive into absurdity with The Accountant, where Ben Affleck played a clinical killer with a social disorder. Now, the pattern continues with Mile 22, featuring Wahlberg as a gifted kid raised to become a soldier. Who is attracted to this idea of the perfectly weaponized soldier? Seriously, who are these movies for? Plus, nothing in Wahlberg's performance indicates any unique qualities, beyond his motor-mouthed wisecracks and incessant rubber band flicking (we learn this was a tic he developed as a child). Wahlberg is all histrionics and no real substance, even if the film forms something of a potentially interesting duality between his character and Iko Uwais's shifty agent.
Peter Berg may have a faulty foundation in the form of Wahlberg's turn as Jimmy Silva, but the whole film is filled with missteps that boggle the mind. In one regard, you have to respect the narrative simplicity of the endeavor. They have to get a guy from an embassy to an airplane. That's it, that's the movie. There are enough twists to keep invested viewers on their toes, but the film is never bogged down in clunky narrative mechanics. Why, then, is Berg so afraid to let the blunt force action speak for itself? He's a competent, sometimes even impressive director of setpieces, as indicated by much of Lone Survivor and the striking Watertown shootout in (the otherwise mediocre) Patriots Day. Here, every scene has been butchered to hell, chopped into a million pieces to the point of incomprehensibility. You're a decent filmmaker and you have Iko Uwais at your disposal- why are you destroying your action scenes?
This has been the main complaint lodged against Mile 22, and I feel like I'm wasting words harping on something that everyone has noted before. But even the scenes of exposition and dialogue in the film are edited in a frenetic, headache-inducing manner, leaving me to wonder just what Berg was possibly trying to do. The film flashes establishing shots so quickly that it almost feels like they've been spliced in after the fact. It's an eyesore and then some.
Some have suggested that Berg has made an examination of his own hyper-patriotic work with this film, which is an interesting proposition. Berg's particular working-class/Blue Lives Matter brand of filmmaking is ripe for a self-examination, but I'm not seeing any of that in Mile 22. The film spends so much of its time on outrageous, bone-crunching action (made worse by the editing), only sprinkling in a taste of geo-political intrigue on occasion. The final minutes attempt to make some kind of blanket statement about the condition of the world in 2018, but to what end? For all of its purported topicality, Berg's latest effort seemingly throws its hands up and runs away, hoping we don't notice that it really didn't say anything meaningful at all.
THE FINAL GRADE: D (3.1/10)
Images courtesy of STX Entertainment
For all its infinite faults, Berg is trying to say something here, but I just don't think he has the slightest idea of what that something is. Berg and screenwriter Lea Carpenter recycle dozens of ideas from far superior movies, only to teeter on the edge of finding something original and profound. Yes, we know war is ambiguous and elite soldiers are trained from birth. You have to bring something more than that to the table. So while Berg clearly has his mind on issues of modern warfare and the blurred lines that come with it, good luck finding anything consistently compelling in this non-stop spectacle of ultra-violence.
Wahlberg plays Jimmy Silva, a task force leader who has been raised to be the most efficient soldier possible. He works for the U.S. government, but he's most comfortable during his Overwatch missions. When an Overwatch mission begins, operatives are working independently, no longer existing under the banner of the United States. As the film begins, Silva and his fellow Overwatch team members- Alice (Lauren Cohan), Sam (Ronda Rousey), and William (Carlo Alban)- are taking down a house rigged with explosives by Russian terrorists. In the process, they kill a number of people, including a teenage kid. It's brutal, but this is what Overwatch does.
Cut to a few months later. In fictional Indocarr City (for a movie so concerned with realism, this is a funny thing to make up), a large amount of radioactive cesium has disappeared, which would be enough to make five cities uninhabitable. Double agent Li Noor (The Raid's Iko Uwais) shows up at the doorstep of the U.S. embassy, claiming he has the code to a key that would give American operatives the locations of the cesium. Noor wants asylum to the U.S., and after a couple of close calls within the embassy, the Americans grant his request. Overwatch is activated, and they'll need to evacuate the critical asset over a stretch of 22 miles. It won't be easy, especially when nobody really knows the truth about what's happening.
I have to say, this new sub-genre of "gifted killer" movies fascinates me. This little trend started with The Equalizer, which features Denzel Washington as a precise and perceptive government assassin. Things took a deep dive into absurdity with The Accountant, where Ben Affleck played a clinical killer with a social disorder. Now, the pattern continues with Mile 22, featuring Wahlberg as a gifted kid raised to become a soldier. Who is attracted to this idea of the perfectly weaponized soldier? Seriously, who are these movies for? Plus, nothing in Wahlberg's performance indicates any unique qualities, beyond his motor-mouthed wisecracks and incessant rubber band flicking (we learn this was a tic he developed as a child). Wahlberg is all histrionics and no real substance, even if the film forms something of a potentially interesting duality between his character and Iko Uwais's shifty agent.
Peter Berg may have a faulty foundation in the form of Wahlberg's turn as Jimmy Silva, but the whole film is filled with missteps that boggle the mind. In one regard, you have to respect the narrative simplicity of the endeavor. They have to get a guy from an embassy to an airplane. That's it, that's the movie. There are enough twists to keep invested viewers on their toes, but the film is never bogged down in clunky narrative mechanics. Why, then, is Berg so afraid to let the blunt force action speak for itself? He's a competent, sometimes even impressive director of setpieces, as indicated by much of Lone Survivor and the striking Watertown shootout in (the otherwise mediocre) Patriots Day. Here, every scene has been butchered to hell, chopped into a million pieces to the point of incomprehensibility. You're a decent filmmaker and you have Iko Uwais at your disposal- why are you destroying your action scenes?
This has been the main complaint lodged against Mile 22, and I feel like I'm wasting words harping on something that everyone has noted before. But even the scenes of exposition and dialogue in the film are edited in a frenetic, headache-inducing manner, leaving me to wonder just what Berg was possibly trying to do. The film flashes establishing shots so quickly that it almost feels like they've been spliced in after the fact. It's an eyesore and then some.
Some have suggested that Berg has made an examination of his own hyper-patriotic work with this film, which is an interesting proposition. Berg's particular working-class/Blue Lives Matter brand of filmmaking is ripe for a self-examination, but I'm not seeing any of that in Mile 22. The film spends so much of its time on outrageous, bone-crunching action (made worse by the editing), only sprinkling in a taste of geo-political intrigue on occasion. The final minutes attempt to make some kind of blanket statement about the condition of the world in 2018, but to what end? For all of its purported topicality, Berg's latest effort seemingly throws its hands up and runs away, hoping we don't notice that it really didn't say anything meaningful at all.
THE FINAL GRADE: D (3.1/10)
Images courtesy of STX Entertainment
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