Summary:
An elite intelligence team tries to smuggle a mysterious police officer out of Indonesia.
My Thoughts:
There’s nothing more annoying than a dumb movie that thinks it’s really smart, and unfortunately “Mile 22” is one of those movies. Mark Wahlberg (“The Happening” (2008)) plays a moody pseudo-intellectual high school student who has just discovered Wikipedia for the first time, and spends his days spewing profanity-laced monologues containing stupid irrelevant facts all over whoever is at the brunt of his bad mood. Okay, not really; Wahlberg plays an annoying version of Ben Affleck in “The Accountant” (2016). You don’t remember “The Accountant”, you say? That’s okay. No one does.
This movie and “The Accountant” are both concern a highly intelligent spec-ops officer. In both films, the characters have a hard time living normal lives because they find it difficult to relate to normal people; they want the things they want now, and they’ll bulldoze whoever gets in their way. There are plenty of characters like this in fiction: Sherlock Holmes (take your pick- there are probably more than a hundred adaptations), Patrick Bateman in “American Psycho” (2000)…um… the Terminator in “Terminator 2: Judgment Day” (1991). These characters are hard to play, because while they might be jerks, they also have to be compelling enough for the audience to forgive them those qualities.
Mark Wahlberg does not have the charisma to pull off that kind of character, nor does this script lend itself to Mark’s character sounding particularly smart (just because you can shout ‘Parlez vous francais?’ doesn’t mean I believe your character is multilingual). Mark constantly berates his crew (even as they’re dying), to the point that I hated him pretty much from the get-go. I was almost rooting for him to die by the end. John Malkovich (“Being John Malkovich” (1999)) looked really funny sporting his army-man haircut wig, but his performance was pretty flat. Honestly the best part of the film was Iko Uwais (“Star Wars: The Force Awakens” (2015)). Iko might not be a household name in America (unless you are a huge martial arts fan), but for those who watch international films, Iko will be a familiar face. Iko was the star of “The Raid” (2011) and “The Raid 2” (2014), two of the most thrilling action films of the 2010s (or any other decade for that matter). In this film, Iko uses his martial arts skills to do all sorts of crazy stunts. Every time he fought people I was impressed (though the editing and camerawork in one or two of the sequences detracted from the fights).
Honestly, the best part about this film in terms of story is just how simple it is. If you’re only watching a movie for the amount of action it can cram into its runtime, then you might really enjoy this film. There’s plenty of bang for your buck, just don’t expect anything compelling as far as plot goes. The film itself is just over an hour and a half, and I would bet forty-five minutes of that runtime is action (the other forty-five is awkward dialog and psychobabble). Whenever Mark and his crew shut up and shoot people, the movie is adequate, but whenever it tries to give us a moral dilemma it fails spectacularly. This movie can’t ask questions about the morality of killing people if it also has a character that repeatedly and gleefully begs his boss to let him use a drone to kill people. What kind of tone are you trying to set? Is this a movie that wants you to realize war is hell, like “Hurt Locker” (2009)? Or is it a movie that wants you to cheer when someone’s face gets blown off like in “Rambo: First Blood Part II” (1985)? I’m not sure.
I did actually appreciate the ending of this film; it subverted my expectations in a good way, and honestly raised my rating by half a point. The infuriating bit was that, plot wise, the most interesting thing to happen in the whole film happens at the very end, and it does so in a way that sets up for a sequel. The problem is that the rest of the movie was rather flat, so I have no intention of ever seeing a sequel even if they were to make one. This was such a whatever action movie that I’m sure in a month I’ll have forgotten I even wrote this review. If I hadn’t been stuck on a plane for eight and a half hours I guarantee I would’ve found something else to watch.
Verdict:
If you want to turn off your brain for an hour and a half and you don’t mind an unlikeable protagonist, go ahead and watch this film. But, if you want a movie with brains, you can absolutely skip this one.
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