Mile 22 | Little White Lies

Mile 22

20 Sep 2018

Words by Elena Lazic

Directed by Peter Berg

Starring Iko Uwais, Lauren Cohan, and Mark Wahlberg

A man in dark clothing aiming a weapon in a chaotic urban setting with burning debris on the ground.
A man in dark clothing aiming a weapon in a chaotic urban setting with burning debris on the ground.
4

Anticipation.

Peter Berg’s last three films were all thrilling and fascinating.

2

Enjoyment.

Confusing mayhem.

3

In Retrospect.

An interesting experiment but not a successful one.

Peter Berg and Mark Wahlberg’s lat­est col­lab­o­ra­tion is an explo­ration of Amer­i­can mil­i­tarism that doesn’t quite work.

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 Raids 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.

You might like

Accessibility Settings

Text

Applies the Open Dyslexic font, designed to improve readability for individuals with dyslexia.

Applies a more readable font throughout the website, improving readability.

Underlines links throughout the website, making them easier to distinguish.

Adjusts the font size for improved readability.

Visuals

Reduces animations and disables autoplaying videos across the website, reducing distractions and improving focus.

Reduces the colour saturation throughout the website to create a more soothing visual experience.

Increases the contrast of elements on the website, making text and interface elements easier to distinguish.