Directed by Peter Berg and starring America’s everyman, Mark Wahlberg, comes the Summer’s latest offer, Mile 22.
Co-starring audience favorite, Iko Uwais (The Raid), Ronda Rousey, Lauren Cohan, and John Malkovich on this 90 minute journey where bullets fly and grenades explode across the screen. Thankfully, the aforementioned 90 minute run-time is the only good thing about Mile 22. As it ensures you won’t have to stay in the theater any longer to endure it’s brain-numbing assault on the senses.
As the film is birthed onto the screen you can instantly tell what type of demographic that Peter Berg has his crosshairs set on. A large portion of movie goers that Berg wants to terrify into believing their neighboring communities are being inhabited by impending foreign entities. Al-Qaeda, Russia, and other villainous territories are name-dropped at the drop of a hat to try and amplify the sense of terror at stake. It’s a maddening trope that signals a part of Hollywood knows where it can make its money, and how it can get audience members rallying behind jaded political ideals. Not only that, but Mile 22 insists on regurgitating endless loops of dialogue aimed at justifying unstable behavior in beefy males by exerting countless threats of gun violence towards other characters in the film. For the entirety of the runtime there is as astonishing amount of gratuitously bloody bodies and shots of the American flag waving in the wind that would make even the most patriotic of Americans cringe. Truth be told, this should be anticipated for Berg and Wahlberg’s fourth collaboration in five years. Despite a general liking towards Patriot’s Day, Lone Survivor, and Deepwater Horizon, it is clear that everyone was here to grab a check. Even Iko Uwais was surprisingly misused despite elevating brief moments of action that paralleled The Raid. Although Berg can’t capture Uwais’ generational talent in the way that Gareth Evans could. For a film that’s adamant on stretching the run-time to the absolute limit, it keeps the encounters brief and choppy. With camerawork seemingly placed inside a broken washing machine, there is no exhilaration to be found within any inch of the frames. There is an overload of violence for the sake of having violence and it bores more than it roars.
The less spoken about Mile 22, the better. As it is 2018’s most terrifyingly awful film thus far. Replicating a portion of Hollywood that still thinks abusing gun violence in films gives audiences a reason to cheer when a person of color gets their head ripped in half by a bullet. It is terrifying more than it is awful, and in that case, Mile 22 is best forgotten. An agitating 90 minute locomotive that is simple in concept, but over-inflated with dumb ideas and petrifying decision making. Go run a mile, or 22. Try and shake this off.