Within the film industry there are certain combinations of directors and actors who seem to be almost inseparable. Martin Scorcese and Robert de Niro or Leonardo Di Caprio, Quentin Tarantino and Uma Thurman, Tim Burton and Johnny Depp, Billy Wilder and Jack Lemmon or Akira Kurosawa and Toshiro Mifune. These are collaborations in which the two seem to reinforce each other. Director Peter Berg has that with Mark Wahlberg. The two previously made Lone Survivor,Deepwater Horizon and Patriots Day. All films that are based on real events. However, this is not the case for Mile 22, which is entirely fictitious
James Silva (Mark Wahlberg) is part of an elite team within the CIA, called Overwatch. James runs his team tightly and does not allow mistakes. This paramilitary team is deployed in the cases when the CIA wants to deny involvement. They are sent to Asia, where they are looking for the very dangerous, nuclear cesium, which is capable of making a large city uninhabitable. The information they have received does not seem to be entirely correct and when the informant Li Noor (Iko Uwais) appears at the American embassy and says he only wants to provide the right information when he is smuggled out of the country, the CIA sees no choice but to finally agree. They have to take Li to a plane, 22 miles from the building. Li Noor is wanted, however, and transport appears to be a huge challenge.
Although IMDb mentions that two editors have worked on this film, I suspect that these are aliases for an AI program that has learned its skills based on stroboscopic videos. The film contains a lot of action that has been edited so quickly that you can not follow what happens in most scenes. You do not know which character is where, who does what or where a danger comes from. But the problem is not only in the action, the structure of the film also could be compared to an Escher drawing, where you sometimes have no idea which scenes are set when. The characters themselves are video game characters without any depth. The film tries to add some, but when the only characteristics of Wahlberg’s character are that he yells at everyone and constantly pulls a rubber band on his wrist or that one of the female team members is only swearing to her ex-husband when she is not at work, which is filtered by an app that she uses, then you start wondering if more time could have been spent on story to make you care for them as a person.
Even Iko Uwais, who became known to a large audience thanks to The Raid and its sequel, is used too little and actually has only one fight scene that shows what he can do (if you manage to follow what is going on). Mile 22 is a hugely frustrating and violent film that could have been directed by Michael Bay (but without American flags and constant explosions). It seems that when Peter Burg does not have the limitation that the story is based on facts, he goes too far and loses focus. Hopefully his next film, which he also makes together with Wahlberg for Netflix, is better.
[score4]