Mile 22 (2018)

Touches You

Really Surprised!

A Masterpiece!

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Yes, it has bad camera work and poor editing. Unlikeable character of Marky Mark as James Silva. But good effort from Rousey, especially Cohan as bad ass woman, go Girl.. Iko Uwais steal the movie with his calm manner, and funtastic fight coreography. Story can be better if it not deliver with too much monologue. Suprise ending, i hope the sequel can be excuted with more elegant editing, focus more to hand to hand combat and more hi-tech involvement. But for summer action movie its quite good.

That may be a low bar since Mission Impossible is probably the second best action flick that year. I tend to like Peter Berg movies and this is his best by far. The "shaky camera" a lot of people complain about has been a staple in Hollywood now for 2 decades and is no worse than the early Jason Bourne films. The plot is somewhat far-fetched (no more so than MI) and the action sequences don't go over-the-top. In fact the martial arts scenes are great. For some reason, Berg decided not to really use Rousey in the hand-to-hand fights.The characters are rough and sarcastic, kind of like the military in real life. All of the acting was good. Rousey especially impressed me, not that she was challenged to do some light romcom. But as some 90's martial artists (think Norris, Van Damme, Segal) proved, merely kicking and punching your way through a movie doesn't qualify as acting.So, who is this movie for? Do you like Peter Berg and Mark Wahlberg? Are you willing to overlook some far fetched plot elements for some realistic action? And like the other movies I compared it to, this is the first installment on what they hope to make a franchise from.

Mile 22 is an espionage thriller that is pure crack for the action addicted. So much action that characterization is left in the cars' dust or lost in high-tech programs. While the techno-glitz and high-speed chases dominate, now and then super government operative James Silva (Mark Wahlberg) peeks thorough with a tough line or two and a few stream-of-consciousness-Jason-Statham-like speeches, minimal at that.Yet, this film belongs to a genre that demands action, in this case smuggling an Asian police officer out of the country in order for him to disclose world-saving information. My enjoyment of this actioner, however, comes largely from the fusion of technology to our sense of vulnerability.While it is comforting to see the government using banks of computers to spy on the minute actions of bad guys, it is discomforting to realize those goons or foreign powers have the same capabilities to spy on us. Even though we can use drones to ferret out enemies, they can do the same.But no enemy can have James, a lethal weapon of high IQ, verbal dexterity, and stirring memories that keep him in the game. Mile 22 is for those who won't complain about the abundance of action and lack of story or character arc. We are in, after all, the end of summer arc when norms of traditional story telling are ignored while we indulge in action porn of the first order. You will enjoy regardless.

This already bad movie was destroyed by EXTREME EDITING!. Every several seconds the scenes get a rapid & unnecessary edit. These hundreds of edits ruined the movie, especially the fight scenes. The producers had the world's most incredible martial arts actor and the excessive editing wrecked his key action scene. Also, many of the filming was ridiculously shaky and close up. This also sabotaged the action scenes and was annoying. Speaking of annoying, Mark Walberg's character was just that. This could have been an OK movie but the photography directors should have left their big egos behind.