National insecurity

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This article was published 17/08/2018 (2631 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Director Peter Berg makes a movie with Mark Wahlberg on a nearly annual basis, and the films are usually based on true stories: Patriots Day, Deepwater Horizon and Lone Survivor. But even when the stories are true, Berg likes to layer big action movie elements in them, apparently in the service of a new genre spinoff of docudrama: docu-action.

Berg, again working with Wahlberg, embraces full-on fiction with Mile 22, a story of a hyper-efficient command unit in Indonesia taking increasingly desperate measures to extricate a mysterious local cop from the country. Wahlberg plays James Silva, the leader of the team, portrayed as a kind of tactical savant. Occupying the shady turf between diplomatic solutions and military action, Silva’s elite force are extreme problem-solvers.

Silva is not the most sympathetic of bosses. A soldier under his command, Alice Kerr (Lauren Cohan of The Walking Dead) is having custody issues with her ex (a cameo by Berg) over their adorable daughter. Silva is not one to pay attention to family matters, especially when things are starting to heat up. One of Alice’s key intelligence sources, a cop named Li Noor (played by Iko Uwais, of the action epic The Raid) has entered the American embassy claiming to have knowledge of a batch of missing radioactive dust that could be employed to create a couple of devastating nukes.

Li brings a digital storage device to the embassy and says he will only unlock it if he is immediately escorted from the country. And after a couple of Indonesian spies in the embassy attempt to kill him, it falls on Silva and his team to escort Li the 22 miles through the city to a waiting American plane. Unfortunately, those 22 miles are seemingly filled with trigger-happy Indonesian agents who evidently don’t have any qualms about inflicting collateral damage on civilians.

The team is overseen by Bishop (John Malkovich), one of those omniscient master spies barking orders in a remote office filled with young tech-heads on laptops.

Adding an element of mystery, a Russian plane circles ominously overhead where officers are reporting to a distraught mystery woman (Natasha Goubskaya). She evidently has a tie-in to the film’s opening sequence, in which Silva’s team efficiently eliminates a house of sketchy Russians up to no good in an idyllic American suburb.

Berg is in a comfort zone directing complex action sequences. His films tend to have a tone of barely controlled ferocity, and that fits nicely with the increasingly dire situation as it unfolds.

But Mile 22 fails to hold together on the whole. One of the problems is that it is one of those contemporary action movies that attempts a documentary-like overlay. It may be the first non-documentary movie to employ the voice of U.S. President Donald Trump — vaguely intoning on the subject of national security — to establish a sense of real-world consequences to the made-up plot. Barack Obama is in there, too.

But, wow, Trump’s voice takes you right out of the movie. For starters, one has a hard time believing American special forces would even act against Russian agents, let alone kill them, given the current geo-political shemozzle.

Other problems involve an irritating series of flash-forwards in which Silva explains to an unseen interrogator what went wrong with the mission. It’s very difficult to hear or understand what the hell he’s talking about. Maybe this is what happens when you cast Mark Wahlberg as some kind of verbal genius. (Anyone who had seen Wahlberg in the dreadful 2014 remake of The Gambler would know that’s outside of his skill set.)

It’s difficult to talk about the end of the film without spoilers. But it has the feel of a quick, untidy wrap-up where the writers decided they just don’t care anymore.

Invest your movie money accordingly.

randall.king@freepress.mb.caTwitter: @FreepKing