Mile 22

It's rare to get to see a full on 18 certificate action film in the cinema these days. Things have changed a lot since the 80's and 90's when nearly every big action flick had that little red 18 cert symbol on their posters. The vast majority of films in this genre are aimed at teenage audiences now, their stories and action beats softened to make them family friendly affairs. Hearing Mile 22 was going to be for an adult audience was a genuine surprise. It's just a pity an adult certificate doesn't guarantee a quality watch.

A batch of highly radioactive caesium is missing and an elite CIA black ops team lead by James Silva (Mark Wahlberg, terrible) is in Indonesia looking for it. A police officer called Li Noor (Iko Uwais, wasted) rocks up to the gates of the embassy claiming to know it's whereabouts and will only share the information if he can get safe passage to the U.S. Silva and his team now have to move Noor the 22 miles to their extraction point but all hell is about to rain down around them.

This might have been a better film had Mark Wahlberg died in the opening scenes. I enjoy the chap but he's such an annoying fucker here that he'll put you off the film even before the terrible action scenes and awful dialogue will. He shouts at everyone and he's a prick to everyone and when he isn't shouting and LOVING the sound of his own voice he turns the smug dial up to 90 which will make you despise him. He's a horrible character and quite why he and writer/director Peter Berg decided to play him like this is baffling. Is it a sly take on how the world perceives America? The loud bully boy sticking its nose in everywhere? A commentary on how taking a government job turns you into a merciless soulless bollix with no room in your life for anything but your job? It would be nice to think this film has the depth and layers to do this but no, it's just a 90 minute action film with a very unlikeable lead.

The action....hmmm. Yes yes it's all very violent and very crunchy but it's not very good and the film's unique selling point is frittered away. Iko Uwais as Li Noor is an amazing martial artist but he's wasted here in his first big English language role. He gets a couple of cool moments but they are so badly shot and so rapidly edited that you don't get any real sense of what a force to be reckoned with he actually is. The star of The Raid franchise deserves better than this. In a perfect world the film would have disposed of Wahlberg in a pre-credits shock moment leaving the next 90 minutes to consist of Iko Uwais decimating people as he strolled to a plane. But instead we get overedited bursts of gunfire interspersed with a bit of hand to hand combat where people we don't give a fig about take on a faceless and never ending swarms of bad guys. It's all done at such a dizzying pace that you'll never be bored but at the same time you'll be a bit baffled because the reason for the dizzying pace is never quite explained. It just has to happen!! 

This is the latest Peter Berg/Mark Wahlberg collaboration about people who take their jobs very very seriously and it's easily the least of them. Lone Survivor, Deepwater Horizon and Patriot's Day were all based on true stories so at least had a reason to exist even if they weren't particularly good. Mile 22 seemed to exist to justify an ending that both sets up a sequel and thinks it's far cleverer than it is. It's the kind of ending that makes you retroactively rethink the entire movie but not in a "OH WOW" kind of a way. No its more of a "Wait, what?? None of this makes any sense" kind of a moment. Berg has deigned to include women in his film this time but in roles that come to nothing. Lauren Cohen of Walking Dead fame tries vainly to bring a bit of heart to the film as a team member concerned about her family life but in the end she just turns into a Wahlberg mini-me and Ronda Roussey's most memorable moment is telling someone to fuck off. Seriously.

This film wants so badly to be the start of a franchise but it doesn't deserve to be. It's the kind of film you'll have forgotten a few days after you watched it. It offers nothing new, there's nothing to hook you in and the stuff you think it will do well is just badly filmed and hard to see. Don't bother. Go to the ploughing championships instead.