Mile 22

We don’t all need to agree that Peter Berg’s last three films were great to recog­nise that they demon­strat­ed the director’s knack for action film­mak­ing. The mud­dled Lone Sur­vivor was an impres­sive train­ing ground for his next two films, estab­lish­ing not only his inter­est in real-life sto­ries, but also his keen eye for spa­tial coher­ence, lack­ing in much action cin­e­ma. Prac­ti­cal­ly stripped of the director’s usu­al mud­dled polit­i­cal con­cerns, Deep­wa­ter Hori­zon came clos­er to a pure def­i­n­i­tion of the action movie, and was all the more thrilling for it, fea­tur­ing some of the most impres­sive spe­cial effects of recent years. In Patri­ots Day, Berg applied his atten­tion to detail and his clar­i­ty to a recre­ation of the man­hunt for the Boston bombers, to deeply engag­ing effect.

Mile 22 seems like a con­scious attempt to try some­thing new, and in many respects the film is dras­ti­cal­ly opposed to the tried and test­ed Peter Berg for­mu­la. Although the CIA Ground Branch divi­sion that the film is focused on does indeed exist, the bonkers sto­ry we are told isn’t tak­en from real life – though it does con­tain crass ref­er­ences to real pol­i­tics. The film opens some­where in the US on the divi­sion, head­ed by Mark Wahlberg’s James Sil­va, infil­trat­ing a house occu­pied by Russ­ian spies hoard­ing some dan­ger­ous tox­ic substance.

Yet this isn’t a ​’90s Hol­ly­wood movie. Rather, Mile 22 sketch­es a ver­sion of Amer­i­ca imbued by cur­rent anx­i­eties around Russ­ian med­dling in the pres­i­den­tial elec­tion and oth­er such secret involve­ment. On Berg’s own admis­sion, the errat­ic and tem­pera­men­tal Sil­va is direct­ly based on none oth­er than Steve Ban­non, the ​‘mas­ter­mind’ behind Trump’s ascent to pow­er. Sil­va was uncom­mon­ly smart as a child and is now sus­pect­ed to suf­fer from some kind of untreat­ed men­tal ill­ness, but the resem­blance to Ban­non and Trump extends fur­ther, into his own view of inter­na­tion­al rela­tions. The Ground Branch he works for is only sent on a mis­sion when nei­ther diplo­ma­cy nor mil­i­tary inter­ven­tion have suc­ceed­ed – their only pri­or­i­ty is the mis­sion, and unlike oth­er forces, they do not have to keep sub­jects alive.

By virtue of this prin­ci­ple, the usu­al sus­pense in watch­ing a team of armed peo­ple enter a dan­ger­ous place with­out killing unarmed peo­ple is com­plete­ly gone, replaced with utter ter­ror: the cold-blood­ed agents do not hes­i­tate to kill. The film’s open­ing scene ends with Silva’s bru­tal, need­less mur­der of a young man, set­ting up the film’s relent­less­ly hys­ter­i­cal tone.

But this licence to kill, as extreme and shock­ing as it is, has a dead­en­ing effect on pro­ceed­ings. What are the stakes? This black-and-white hys­te­ria is com­pli­cat­ed by the division’s next mis­sion, 16 months lat­er, of pro­tect­ing an Indone­sian police offi­cer (The Raid​’s Iko Uwais) offer­ing infor­ma­tion about the rest of the miss­ing tox­ic sub­stance. The mys­te­ri­ous, hand­some, almost per­pet­u­al­ly silent offi­cer only demands to be extra­dit­ed to Amer­i­ca, and the divi­sion is charged to pro­tect him on the 22 miles sep­a­rat­ing the Amer­i­can embassy from the airport.

This proves more com­pli­cat­ed than planned, with the Indone­sian gov­ern­ment secret­ly oppos­ing this oper­a­tion and attempt­ing to mur­der the offi­cer. Uwais’ mar­tial arts abil­i­ties quick­ly come into use, and are as delight­ful to watch as ever. But the jux­ta­po­si­tion of these extreme­ly impres­sive skills, and of Wahlberg’s trig­ger-hap­py atti­tude is jar­ring and con­fus­ing. The film seems unable to rec­on­cile these com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent forms of vio­lence, and the con­trast­ing reg­is­ters they evolve in.

It’s as though Berg, usu­al­ly an expert at ground­ing every ele­ment he works with into real­i­ty, here seems to let Silva’s hys­ter­i­cal think­ing imbue the very struc­ture of the film. Ban­non prob­a­bly wouldn’t find Uwais’ char­ac­ter implau­si­ble at all. This sense of chaos, unchar­ac­ter­is­tic of Berg’s work, even affects the action sequences, and what is a rather straight­for­ward shootout in the mid­dle of a busy inter­sec­tion becomes con­fus­ing bloodshed.

Most bewil­der­ing of all is the film’s tone. Wahlberg – whose pres­ence in Berg’s three pre­vi­ous films was always their weak­est point – takes cen­tre stage here, and plays such an unlike­able and annoy­ing char­ac­ter that it is impos­si­ble to believe we are sup­posed to be on his side. The film’s vio­lent finale does sug­gest that he was the bad guy all along, but while this could make for an inter­est­ing exper­i­ment for the direc­tor, it does not trans­late into an enjoy­able expe­ri­ence for the viewers.

Often per­ceived as the most straight­for­ward­ly pro-Amer­i­can and pro-mil­i­tary of direc­tors, Berg has been dis­creet­ly com­pli­cat­ing this cliché in all his col­lab­o­ra­tions with Wahlberg. His deci­sion to set his most unfor­giv­ing explo­ration of Amer­i­can mil­i­tarism with­in an unde­ni­ably com­mer­cial reg­is­ter is sad­ly most valu­able as a failed experiment.