Mile 22 (2018) Review

“Mile 22” Japanese Theatrical Poster

Director: Peter Berg
Cast: Mark Wahlberg, John Malkovich, Lauren Cohan, Iko Uwais, Ronda Rousey, Sam Medin, Nikolai Nikolaeff, Chae Rin Lee, Poorna Jagannathan, Myke Holmes
Running Time: 94 min.

By Kelly Warner

There’s a joke online that when an international breaking news tragedy occurs, Peter Berg and Mark Wahlberg are first in line to get the movie rights. From terrorist attacks to environmental disasters, it would seem that the duo never read of a tragedy that they didn’t also see as a movie-making opportunity. With Mile 22, their fourth collaborative effort as director and star (they’re presently working on their fifth), somebody got their wires crossed. My theory is that someone read the screenplay and remarked, “This script is a tragedy,” and Berg and/or Wahlberg stepped up like ‘Fucking give that to me, it’s mine now’… I’m having fun. But I’m not. Mile 22 is an ugly, foul, mean-spirited movie that only makes itself look dumber in its repeated attempts to sound smart.

Mile 22 follows the super-secret CIA program known as ‘Overwatch’ which is operated in coordination with a ground crew led by Wahlberg and an analysis, eye-in-the-sky team led by John Malkovich (wearing a magnificent wig). In an early sequence, the team takes down a cell of Russian agents hiding out in plain sight in the US. The Overwatch crew moves onto their next assignment overseas, not knowing that this action pissed off the wrong Russian who finds a way to listen in on their future op.

In Indonesia, a supposedly low-level cop played by Iko Uwais (The Raid) turns himself in to Overwatch. He has information that could save the world from a WMD threat and all he asks is that Wahlberg’s team gets him out of the country alive. Sounds simple – just 22 miles to a runway where a plane is waiting – but then a whole armada of soldiers, hired guns, and government assassins step in to derail their plan and kill the Indonesian cop.

Structurally, I have no issue with the film. The basic concept is sound: a tough crew takes on seemingly easy mission that goes south and suddenly becomes an international incident as they rush to make their getaway. It moves pretty fast, too. And the ending ain’t bad. But this feels like praising the film’s storyboards or the screenplay’s outline. The broad strokes are fine but the execution is awful.

This is the most abrasive action movie I can remember watching in many years. It mistakes dehumanizing hostility for wit at every turn. Every character monologues if given half the chance. Wahlberg’s character is the worst of them. At one point, Malkovich tells him, “Stop monologing, you bipolar fuck.” And then Malkovich does one of his own monologues, quoting I don’t fucking know what at a time that doesn’t seem appropriate to be quoting fucking anything. There’s a scene in which Wahlberg badgers a woman who comes looking for help. The film treats its audience no better.

Wahlberg is intolerable in the movie. It’s no secret among those who know me that I am not one of the actor’s fans. In addition to having a history of racist violence, he is also an uninteresting actor with very few different performances across his filmography. Here, Wahlberg is doing a more amped up version of his performance from The Departed (to be fair, one of his best performances). In Mile 22’s opening credits sequence, we come to understand that Wahlberg’s hero is on the spectrum, was orphaned at an early age, and virtually raised by government agencies that wanted to use his gifts. It’s like ever since BBC’s Sherlock movies and TV have enjoyed using characters that were born with high-functioning autism and other such conditions as shorthand for creating characters that are brilliant assholes (sometimes they’re brilliant dangerous assholes). I’m not sure if Wahlberg’s character here is particularly brilliant (we’re told he is) but he’s definitely an asshole. Occasionally the film reminds us of his mental state, but it’s really just an excuse for him to be awful and for us to go, Oh, it’s because of his condition. It’s insincere.

The only other members of Wahlberg’s crew that get any sort of character development are played by Ronda Rousey and Lauren Cohan. Rousey is grating but Cohan is fine. Really, other than Iko Uwais, Cohan is one of the only actors that didn’t embarrass themselves in the movie. She makes a pretty convincing case for a film career post-The Walking Dead.

Speaking of Iko: what a waste. His largely English-language performance is decent, even better than expected actually, but he was hired for his abilities in action scenes. The action in the film is edited in a frantic, choppy manner that could’ve made someone like Diane Keaton come across as a halfway convincing badass. Sometimes you can’t tell it’s Iko at all. It’s simply garbage. Iko Uwais pulls off a few good moves, enough to make him into the threat that the movie has designed him to be, but it’s nothing special compared to what we’ve seen him do before. If this was your introduction to Iko Uwais, you’d likely forget his name the next day. Beyond Skyline remains the action star’s best English language production to this point. (The rest of the action sequences beyond Iko Uwais kicking and stabbing people are mainly Call of Duty-style shootouts and none of these are edited with any commendable sense of style either.)

Though I have some issues with things he’s said and occasionally question his intentions, I’ve always found Peter Berg to be a more than competent filmmaker. Friday Night Lights is one of the best films about American football ever made. The Rundown was one of the first instances of a film using Dwayne Johnson correctly. And Deepwater Horizon, despite some reservations I might’ve had going in, is a legitimately good movie. Mile 22 is a huge step down from everything Berg has directed before. It’s like he took all the wrong lessons from Michael Bay action sequences, added some questionable politics to the movie (some are seriously just questions, like why the presidential bobbleheads locked away in a padded case? Is this prop comedy or…?), purposefully made virtually everyone in his action movie ensemble a total dick, and let his buddy Wahlberg run wild with the thing. One imagines that if the film was directed by almost any other individual, perhaps Wahlberg might’ve been more reined in and that Berg, being a friend and frequent collaborator of Wahlberg’s, couldn’t see how wrong everything was going until it was too late.

Mile 22 was envisioned as the first part of a series with a script apparently written with Wahlberg in mind. The actor based at least part of his character off the white nationalist and former White House strategist Steve Bannon (director Berg has tried to play this down). I can’t say that Bannon comes through in the performance. But I hated the character and I hate Steve Bannon, so maybe?  If the movie seriously gets sequels – unlikely, but that was the plan – then God help us. Mile 22 is one of the very worst films I’ve seen this year.

Kelly Warner’s Rating: 2/10