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Mile 22 (2018), R, ★


Peter Berg and Mark Wahlberg have been an underrated combination who had made three very solid movies: Lone Survivor, Deepwater Horizon and Patriots Day. I believe Wahlberg has been used to the best of his abilities in these dramatic movies where he is truly committed to portraying non-fictional characters. Now, even though they had made true stories in three different genres (war, disaster and drama), Wahlberg and Berg decided to make a fictional action thriller that make it a fun ride. Well, as a result, this ride was a rollercoaster going around in circles and shaking you up and down and after the ride is over, you have to dizzily make your way to the car, confused as to what just happened.

American Black Operations agent James Silva (Mark Wahlberg) leads a strike team called Overwatch to infiltrate a Russian FSB safe house that is located on their American soil. Under James Bishop's (John Malkovich) supervision, their mission is to locate and destroy shipments of cesium before it can be weaponized to annihilate everybody in that area. They are unsuccessful to save all of the cesium. 16 months later, Indonesian police officer Li Noor (Iko Uwais) surrenders himself at the U.S. embassy to negotiate a deal to leave the country in exchange for giving out secretive information.

The information in a disc that Noor has in his place is destroying itself and the disc itself will be useless in a few hours. While on hold, Noor defeats the Indonesian agents attempting to assassinate him. Overwatch operatives Sam Snow (Ronda Rousey) and Alice (Lauren Cohan) are impressed by his abilities and they learn that he used to be Indonesian Special Forces. Silva and his team take Noor to an airplane, 22 miles away, while being attacked on the way.


The best descriptions for Mile 22 are tiresome and erratic. I had no idea what was going on in most of the frames in the movie as most of the movie is mostly built-up with the execution of the plot already taken place. This is an overly edited, shakily shot, incoherent film that gets you confused as to why Berg resented to go back to 2000s directing when Paul Greengrass directed his Jason Bourne films. It does not give talented actor/stuntman Iko Uwais enough breathing room to kick people's ass with great stunts. The movie relies on so much camera technique than letting the actors do their job. Plus, the random dialogue is all over the place as two people are talking at once and it does not help their complicated, incoherent film at all.

Iko Uwais is the only standout of the film and is the reason, along with some solid action, that it gets a star from me. Mark Wahlberg's character keeps on chattering along and never shuts up. Lauren Cohan I kinda liked but her character is a bit formulaic from other movies as she is a terrible mother. There should have been more character background and exploration in her headspace. John Malkovich should have been a bit sillier here and Ronda Rousey, who is actually sort of decent here, tries to commit but does not quite give it her all.

I do not get the message behind terrorism and the Indonesians going after him and also the Russians hacking into the system. I guess they are bad? The movie is incomprehensible into delivering the reason why the ending happened like it happened. It was a terrible, dull ending. This is without question director Peter Berg's worst film since Battleship as the movie spends more time on its erratic, shaky camerawork on the stunts and action than having some more meat on the story, screenplay and its characters. It is an idea that is not fully fleshed out to the best of their abilities and their intentions. What a colossal disappointment from the combination of Peter Berg and Mark Wahlberg.

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