Mile 22 is an action-thriller where an elite American intelligence officer, aided by a top-secret tactical command unit, tries to smuggle a mysterious police officer with sensitive information out of the country.
Mark Wahlberg teams up with director Peter Berg once again in this action junket about an elite tactical command unit in southeast Asia that is tasked with smuggling a local police officer out of the country. While this had the makings to be an unoriginal yet fun Wahlberg vehicle, it only landed on the unoriginal piece. From its weak title, all over the place dialogue, and characters you just don’t care about, Mile 22 misses the mark.
The movie begins by introducing us to the Overwatch team, which is a top-secret, American tactical command unit brought in for the most extreme of situations. They are on a stateside mission to take down Russian spies who are operating on US soil, and their plan winds up going awry and turns into a shootout where they kill all of the Russians. Overwatch is overseen by Bishop (John Malkovich), and led on the ground by James Silva (Wahlberg).
Flash forward 16 months to the team’s next mission that is taking place in Southeast Asia under the CIA. There is a highly dangerous chemical powder, comparable to nuclear weapons, that they are working to track down from terrorists. Part of the team, Alice Kerr (Lauren Cohan), is gaining their intel through a local informant, police officer Li Noor (Iko Uwais). One day Noor comes right into the American embassy and asks for asylum in America in exchange for giving up the location of the chemical powder.
After some local government agents infiltrate the embassy and attempt to kill Noor, the CIA believe his story and agree to transport him to an airstrip 22 miles away. Silva and his team resign from their current CIA positions and pick back up with Overwatch in order to carry out the secret mission. As soon as their journey begins they are ambushed and attacked by local government agents. All the while, there is a Russian spy plane that has hacked into the communications of Overwatch, looking to carry out a secret mission of their own.
Like I said earlier, this one just missed the mark across the board. The opening scene is lazy, the title sequence is a weird montage that builds an unnecessary backstory for Silva, and the rest of the film is chock full of weak dialogue and repetitive shoot ‘em up sequences. Of all the collaborations between Berg and Wahlberg, this one felt like the most try hard of forced patriotism. Moving forward they should stick to recreating true stories. As much as I wanted to get behind Wahlberg’s character, I just couldn’t do it. He could talk the talk, but he really didn’t walk the walk. He was built up to be some secret agent killing machine, but he wasn’t even close to the coolest character in this movie.
Which brings us to Uwais, who was the rare bright spot in the film. Fans of The Raid movies will be pleased to see him pop up in this one, where he brings his insane form of martial arts to the table. The hand-to-hand fight scenes that he has are amazing, not to mention the only time in the movie I didn’t catch myself yawning. Ironically, the climax of the movie takes place in a large, worn down apartment building, and I even caught myself thinking “wow, this reminds me of The Raid.” Of course, the scene didn’t have near the intensity or action of The Raid, but the building looked the same. It was very fortunate that he was cast in this movie, because were it not for him I wouldn’t have much positive to say.
A problem that movies can run into is when they try to force their characters on you to create an emotional connection. Berg attempts that here with Cohan’s character who’s dealing with the struggle of balancing the job with her daughter in the midst of a divorce. There is no real commitment to showing the emotional toll that this takes on her, just a lot of swearing and a smashed phone. On top of that, Wahlberg shows her no compassion and tells her that it’s just a part of the job. Without him showing her any support, it makes it impossible for the audience to try and do so. The smart move on Berg’s part would’ve been to cut the attempt at the emotional connection, and either develop better action or a smarter plot.
At the end of the day we’re left with a B-movie action flick. The plot isn’t groundbreaking, the dialogue can be cheesy and cringeworthy, and the non-Uwais action scenes might put you to sleep. It also had an abrupt ending that makes it seem like they’re setting up a sequel that you don’t want. If you’re in need of a quality action flick at the theater, my advice would be to shell out $12 and see Mission: Impossible – Fallout again.