MISSING THE MARK
Wahlberg plays black-ops leader in violent ‘Mile 22’
The fourth and least successful collaboration between director Peter Berg and producer-actor Mark Wahlberg, “Mile 22” is no “Catch-22,” I can tell you. It’s a superviolent, shaky-cammed shoot-’em-up about a group of highly trained, heavily armed, black-ops operators so black that they have no official affiliation with the government. They are “ghosts.” They are also not much as characters.
Chief among them is Jimmy Silva (Wahlberg), former hyperactive child turned super-sniper and all-around killing machine, who makes sinister pronouncements (“Evil exists”) and speaks in riddles and sounds a lot like the loony tune played by Mel Gibson in “Conspiracy Theory.”
In opening scenes of a siege upon what looks like an ordinary suburban American house, Jimmy kills a young Russian agent. This sets in motion — I think — a plot to smuggle a quantity of weapons-grade Cesium powerful enough to wipe out several major cities into the United States. The game, as someone once said, is afoot.
Also on Jimmy’s team are buttkicking Sam Snow (Rhonda Rousey), who takes the time during the opening raid to take dental impressions of her captives to help identify them, and fellow ghost — and divorced mother in yoga clothes with an awful ex-husband — Alice Kerr (Lauren Cohan of “The Walking Dead,” who is great at the physical stuff, not so convincing otherwise).
When Jimmy and his team are in the field, they are backed by a high-tech group headed by Bishop (John Malkovich), a prissy ringmaster in suit and tie and Converse sneakers. The trouble — outside of badly delivered banal dialogue — is the Russians have hacked Bishop’s computers, and the only person who can tell the Americans where the Cesium is is a captive named Li Noor (the amazing Iko Uwais, “The Raid: Redemption”), who isn’t talking.
Director Berg and Wahlberg have previously specialized in real-life heroes (“Patriots Day,” “Deepwater Horizon,” “Lone Survivor”). Here, they have made a not very good imitation of the “Bourne” films, using the plot of the old Clint Eastwood film “The Gauntlet.”
At one point, Jimmy says something about “collusion” and adds, “You know nothing.”
Whatever, Marky, I mean Jimmy. The real star of the film is not Wahlberg, who drones on and on and is like the boring weird guy at the office party, but Uwais, who has charisma to spare and makes his super-athletic fight scenes look more real than any of the other ones in the film. Hey, Hollywood, give this guy from Jakarta a movie of his own.