Breathless ‘Mile 22’ can’t go the distance
“Mile 22” looks like what happens when someone on a jittery Red Bull jag decides to make a movie at 2 a.m. after fast-forwarding through “The Bourne Identity.”
That someone in this case is Peter Berg, whose previous collaborations with star Mark Wahlberg — “Lone Survivor,” “Patriots Day,” “Deepwater Horizon” — were efficiently made action-thrillers that served to honor the soldiers, first responders and oil-rig workers on which their stories were based.
“Mile 22,” freed from such realworld constraints, is instead a breathless, dizzying exercise in incoherence only occasionally steadied by the martial-arts mayhem kicked up by co-star Iko Uwais from “The Raid” movies.
Wahlberg is James Silva, an agent for a super-super-secret government operation called Overwatch who’s part of a team assigned to transport a dangerous asset — Li Noor (Uwais) — 22 miles through the crowded streets of a Southeast Asian city to a waiting plane. If Noor is delivered safely, he will give them the code to unlock a program detailing where some missing radioactive materials needed for a dirty bomb are located.
The trouble is neither the local government nor the Russians want Noor to get to his destination. Hijinks ensue.
The bigger trouble with the movie
Rated R: for strong violence and language Running time: 95 minutes