MILE 22

  • 08 Sep - 14 Sep, 2018
  • Farheen Jawaid
  • Reviews

There is not much to write home about Mile 22 – a loud, badly crafted action thriller that sits somewhere between Sicario and Bourne movies. While those are (almost) evergreen, this one has gone bad even before it hit the screens. Even the 94-min runtime is too much for this unsatisfactory actioner.


The movie is about a military intelligence unit made up of anger-prone misfits led by James Silva (Mark Wahlberg), Alice (Lauren Cohan) and other members with some degree of backstory. The team is called Overwatch, who cross over borders of other nations to unearth information to stop attacks against America and its civillians around the globe.

After a torturous opening, the story introduces Li Noor (Iko Uwais), a super-agent in his own right, who has information that can stop a set of bombs. However, he will only divulge that information after he is safely transported to an American aircraft on his way out of Indonesia (where the movie is set). Overwatch has to take Noor through 22 miles to the safety of the plane.

This is the fourth time Mark Wahlberg and director Peter Berg have worked together on a project, and the first one the two made that is not based on a real life incident. Beside Patriots Day (which I have not seen), Lone Survivor and Deepwater Horizon (both finely crafted movies) also showed Wahlberg delivering controlled performances.

In Mile 22 both, Berg and Wahlberg seem to have lost reason and rhythm on how to take this movie from point A to point B. Even when Wahlberg’s character has it quirks, the way they decide to emulate it is Wahlberg yelling at anyone sharing his screen, or by looking in an unblinking wide-eyed crazy to get a point across.

The story, written by Graham Roland and Lea Carpenter, tries to invigorate the plot with points that might make a better movie. Tonally, one feels as lost as Wahlberg. Mile 22’s overall shallowness of character and its overzealous pace, drags the movie to a level of a badly made procedural show from T.V. – complete with bad acting to boot. •

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