Mile 22: Review
Mark Wahlberg leads a team of Special Forces that are the last and final option for when everything else fails, or so the movie poster goes. Mile 22 is the story of these high skilled soldiers delivering a high value target to an airfield in a hostile country. The entire country will seemingly come out of the woodwork to stop them from reaching their goal in the process.
If that sounds vaguely like the premise to the movie S.W.A.T. that’s because it is. If you’ve seen the Samuel L Jackson and Colin Farrell lead film then you have already seen the superior version. Which is saying something.
When this is a superior movie you have a problem
Mile 22 wastes no time in just being terrible either. The film starts with James Silva’s (Mark Wahlberg) team executing a somewhat entertaining raid on a home occupied by foreign criminals. From there however it goes into one of the weirdest opening credits I’ve seen in years. It spends much of the credits laying on exposition about James Silva’s character being extremely bright/gifted but also prone to anger and rage. This feels forced and it is incredibly obvious as the movie continues that this is jammed into the credits because at no time does the movie successfully show Silva as being intelligent.
Most every character in this film, Mark Wahlberg’s especially, substitutes fast talking and swearing for being clever. Like Kevin Smith writing dialogue while on speed (is “speed” still a thing or is it just meth these days?). To say that the dialogue in Mile 22 sounds like it was written by a 13 year old is being kind, it’s truly atrocious throughout. Arguably more important is that it leaves Silva’s character completely and totally unlikable. I don’t blame Wahlberg though, actors depend a lot on directors to let them know if there performance is missing the mark and a director like Peter Berg should clearly have known better.
Roughly what sitting through this movie feels like
Mile 22 is an action flick though right? So we can forgive some cheesy dialogue and poor story for all the ass kicking right? Well unfortunately Mile 22 mostly offers a series of shaky cam fights that fail to show much of the action in any sort of enjoyable way. What we get often switches between boring to chaotic (and not in a good way).
If it isn’t obvious, there isn’t really anything to warrant a trip to the theater for Mile 22. There’s not much reason to make the trip to the Redbox either. Mile 22 is a forgettable action film where the only thing worse than the action is the characters. In fact, the most memorable thing about Mile 22 is how bad it is, and not in a “so bad, it is kind of good” sort of way either. Even if you’ve seen everything else your local theater has to offer I’d still suggest something else.
Final Rating: 3/10
GoG Break Down:
How it was viewed: Theater
Running time: 1hr 34m
Recommend viewing: Not recommended
Why you should see it: You are, for some reason, having a Mark Wahlberg film festival and don’t want to leave a single film out.
Why you shouldn’t see it: There is any other movie playing at the theater.