Written by Wayne Townsend
I won’t draw this out, Mile 22 is a bad film. What makes the movie so horrible is the waste of a good premise, an elite covert governmental agency charged with stopping domestic terrorism populated with highly skilled operatives using state of the art technology. Wait, what, been there done that, tee shirt, blah blah, blah. The movie stars Mark Wahlberg, a wasted John Malkovich, Lauren Cohen, Iko Uwais, (star of the best action/martial art film ever, Raid: The Redemption), and Ronda Rousey. Director Peter Berg has many credits, mixed at best. Wahlberg is the leader of this group who suffers from a never defined anger disorder that he can only control by waxing poetically about the definitions of duty, patriotism, and honor. If not, he can become quite literally homicidal as shown through a montage of his life, growing up fighting at the drop of a hat, through grade school, his military career and his selection to lead the team. This makes him the perfect point man for this clandestine military group whose number one attribute is its ability to stay in the shadows (insert sarcasm here). With no plot point the spoil, his character embodies the film, rudderless. The story unfolds while he is being deposed as to why the mission went awry. Even the well-choreographed firefights and martial art sequences are ruin with the use of the “shaky camera effect” used to give the audience a sense of being in the fight, made popular in the Bourne films. Could be what Berg intended, since what transpired was a recap told through the eyes of a person with a personality disorder. If that was the case, then Berg was brilliant. There is a plot twist in the end that, well it makes no sense. I mean even diehard Wahlberg fans will sigh. But Marky Mark’s swag alone will eventually earn him pass. For the rest of us, simply pass. 1 out of 5. And my boss says I’m not generous.