Mile 22

MILE 22(18)

D: Peter Berg

STX/Huayi Brothers (Peter Berg, Mark Wahlberg & Stephen Levinson)

US 2018

94 mins

Action/Thriller

W: Lea Carpenter

DP: Jacques Jouffret

Ed: Colby Parker, Jr. & Melissa Lawson Cheung

Mus: Jeff Russo

Mark Wahlberg (James Silva), Iko Uwais (Li Noor), Lauren Cohan (Alice Kerr), John Malkovich (James Bishop), Ronda Rousey (Sam Snow)

Director Peter Berg has been dubbed a poundstore Michael Bay by some, which is quite harsh considering he helmed Deepwater Horizon, Lone Survivor and Patriots' Day, all of which were decent movies, and only 2012's Battleship on his resumé is considered a dud... until now.

The film opens with a montage which shows Mark Wahlberg's character James Silva to be some kind of child prodigy-come-adult genius. Unfortunately, this is never shown in the rest of the movie as he just acts like an obnoxious, shouty douchebag who leads a covert government unit and shoots at people every now and then.

His covert group of agents must accompany a political prisoner 22 miles across hostile territory where he awaits extradition, upon which he will reveal information which will prevent a potential terrorist attack.

Wahlberg's aside, the performances are okay, especially Lauren Cohan, but the action scenes are poorly executed, mostly due to the baffling direction and editing choices, which are far too frenetic to actually make out what's going on, and thus must serve only to disguise poor stunt work.

At a mere 94 minutes, at least it's not too big a waste of time.

4/10