I have always been fascinated when directors latch onto a particular actor, working with them repeatedly. Whether it is Scorsese with DiCaprio, Burton with Depp, Anderson with Murry, it seems like Peter Berg is this way with Mark Wahlberg. Starting with 2013’s “Lone Survivor,” they also collaborated on “Deepwater Horizon” and “Patriots Day,” now adding “Mile 22” to the list, trying to close out the 2018 Summer Movie Season as loudly as possible.
Wahlberg plays James Silva, the head operative for Ground Branch, a team that handles situations that even the best of black ops groups cannot, and therefore really don’t exist. Aided by Alice Kerr (Lauren Cohan), Sam Snow (Ronda Rousey), and their eyes and ears in James Bishop (John Malkovich), they are tasked with smuggling former policeman and informant Li Noor (Iko Uwais) out of the country to keep him safe after he reveals an encrypted disk that has the locations worldwide that are storing elements to make Weapons of Mass Destruction. With a small window to travel twenty-two miles (hence the title) through dangerous territory and deliver him to the extraction point safely, it proves tougher than ever since pretty much everyone wants him dead.
On the surface, this seems like a sure-fire hit; HOWEVER, beneath the craggy exterior and bravado that Berg and Wahlberg seem to be cranking out by the gallon lurks and absolute MESS of a film that tries too much while accomplishing so little. Silva is a completely unlikeable character who is constantly ripping into those around him due to a mental glitch, causing him to calm the trigger down by snapping his wrist with a rubber band that is just unrelatable and unsympathetic. Most of the cast is horribly underused here as Rousey pretty much just glares menacingly and Uwais (most well known for “The Raid: Redemption”) doesn’t even scratch the surface of what he is capable of (and there’s just no excuse for that). I feel like the more that Berg and Wahlberg work together, the worse it seems to be getting, and with “Mile 22” being angled as yet another trilogy of films, I’m not sure I can handle another twenty-two FEET of film used on this.