The suspense thriller aspect has become a common staple when it comes to the espionage genre mostly because of the fact that so many films of this genre that have been produced in the past 20 years. Certainly since 9-11, we have seen a plethora of these films, so when "Mile 22" came along, it was merely added to that ever growing list.
Mark Wahlberg stars as James Silva, an operative of the CIA's most highly-prized and least understood unit. Added by a top-secret tactical command team including Alice Kerr (Lauren Cohan), Sam Snow (Ronda Rousey), William Douglas III (Carlo Alban) and all lead by Bishop (John Malkovich), Silva must retrieve and transport an asset, Li Noor (Iko Uwais) who holds life-threatening information to Mile 22 for extraction before the enemy closes in. With a small frame of time, will Silva et.al. be able to transport this asset and retrieve the info needed before all hell breaks loose?
Others to round out the cast are Natasha Goubskaya as Vera, Chae Rin Lee as Queen, Sam Medina as Axel, Keith Arthur Bolden as King, Jenique Hendrix as Knight, Billy Smith as Rook, Myke Holmes as Pawn, Emily Skeggs as M.I.T. and Terry Kinney as Johnny Porter.
This was directed by veteran Peter Berg ("Very Bad Things" '98, "The Rundown" '03, "Friday Night Lights" '04, "The Kingdom" '07, "Hancock" '08, "Virtuality" (TV movie) '09, "Battleship" '12, "Lone Survivor" '13, "Bloodline" (TV movie) '13, "Deepwater Horizon" '16, "Patriots Day" '16) plus videos and TV with grit, suspense and reality. He definitely knows what it's like to be able to walk in his actors' footsteps since he is an actor himself. In fact his career started in front of the camera and has continued ,albeit with smaller roles. This is his third film directing Wahlberg which has turned out to be a beneficial and financial aspect to their relationship. If this director is someone you might be following, his "Wonderland" is in pre-production as I'm writing this. It was written by Lea Carpenter (TV series documentary). This is where this project runs into problems. What started as a potentially original and intriguing storyline merely jumped and meandered through a good part of this. There were times when I was confused on who was the enemy or bad guys. And there was so much going back an forth within the same scenes, it was difficult to keep up. One of the culprits here was the fact that the writer, Carpenter had no other feature film or TV experience to allow this story to be effective. It wasn't a total wash, Wahlberg's over-the-top character as this intense CIA op was intriguing--almost comical in some scenes, because of his extreme passion. And certainly stunt coordinator, Kevin Scott's work with the stunts was amazing wondering how they were even executed.
Certainly if the espionage genre is your favorite, this will intrigue you enough to forgive a script that needed much polishing. I'm sure this writer has promise, but they should cut their teeth more on TV before attempting feature film land. The ray of sunshine here is both Berg and Wahlberg. They will keep you riveted to the screen.
Out of 4 Stars: 2 Rated: R 95min.
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