Review: Mile 22 Breaks All The Rules In All The Wrong Ways
- Aug 31, 2018
- 2 min read
Peter Berg has never made a good movie. Mark Wahlberg has never headlined a good movie. This movie should have been given to someone else...also rewritten. That's not a bad idea.
James Silva (Wahlberg) is a CIA operative with an unspecified and totally irrelevant mental condition that causes him to be a colossal asshole. Operating in the vague location of South East Asia, he and his cardboard cutout team played by no one worth mentioning, save for the pointlessly and puzzling cast Ronda Rousey, looking for a radioactive compound. When Li Noor (Iko Uwais), a South East Asian special forces soldier, approaches the US embassy and declares that he knows the location of the the compound, he is taken into custody. Demanding asylum in the USA, or he won't reveal the information, Silva and his squad of disposable soldiers must escort him to the airport, all while under attack from South East Asian forces. And then things get more complex than they ever should have. You've got your obligatory Russians, family drama (why?), some obvious twists and some pointless twists and an ending that teases a sequel that no one wants, no one needs, and isn't earned.
It was so simple. Take modern action cinemas best star, Iko Uwais, throw him alongside a notable Hollywood star, Wahlberg, and have them fight their way through a horde of bad guys. Easy money. But no. Instead we have Mile 22. The action is bad, the script is bad, screw it, everything except for one shot, is bad. Wahlberg speaks almost as fast as the film cuts, with one minute long conversation having at least 30 cuts, for some absurd reason. And the action scenes are worse. Nigh on incomprehensible, they're nothing more than a blur of grunting men and blood spurts.
Then there's the stupidity of the whole thing. Be warned, I'm spoiling this shit-show. When characters aren't being absolute morons, doing things like having one round in their gun or reloading after firing a fresh 30 round magazine 4 times, they're just generally unlikable. It is in fact, enjoyable to watch them die in various ways, I only wish there were more of them. I mentioned Ronda Rousey earlier for one reason. Uwais is revealed to be a bad guy, and never fights the heroes. It's dumb. It makes no sense. You have MMA fighter Ronda Rousey, AND SHE JUST SHOOTS PEOPLE. You have Iko Uwais, himself a legitimate martial artist who has the opportunity to fight one of the heroes., AND HE NEVER DOES. To see Uwais and Rousey go at it might have made this awful film worthwhile. But no. Peter "I have no idea what I'm doing how do I l keep getting work?" Berg even manages to screw that up.
The verdict on this one is simple. Just watch The Raid. Either of them. Both are better than this miserable excuse for a movie that will, with any luck, be forgotten before it's cinematic run ends.
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