Mile 22 Review – Spoiler Free
Mile 22 is a film which comes directed by Peter Berg who some may know as the director of Patriots Day (2016) or Deepwater Horizon (2016). The film stars Mark Wahlberg, Lauren Cohan, Iko Uwais, John Malkovich and Ronda Rousey. Mile 22 is an action spy film about a secret American intelligence agency known as Overwatch which looks into high level security threats and neutralises them before they become major incidents.
When first seeing the trailer for Mile 22 I was initially quite excited about the film. I’ve always enjoyed watching Mark Wahlberg in action movies and can usually count on him being decent in each one lately. On top of that, this movie also has Lauren Cohan in it and being a massive fan of The Walking Dead, I was very interested to see her appear in this film.
I have to say that after seeing Mile 22 last week, that both actors certainly met my expectations. While I do know it’s probably not long until we see Mark Wahlberg again in the cinema as he’s a massive movie star, I do hope we get to see more from Lauren Cohan in the future at the cinema if she does end up finishing with The Walking Dead later this year. She seems well suited to the action genre and performed well in her scenes in Mile 22 with Mark Wahlberg.
The story we get in Mile 22 is a fairly standard spy film type of story. We have our characters who all work for a secret organisation known as Overwatch and a threat emerges from a character named Li who needs to be smuggled 22 miles to an extraction point, but many people are trying to kill him and you won’t know which character in this spy mystery you can trust. The story is quite linear and is set up well to create a variety of action moments throughout its run time. My only complaint about the plot and the movie in general is that it seemed to me that towards the end the story wrapped up rather quickly and I was a little disappointed with that. With a run time of 94 minutes I suppose they had no time left but an extra 10 minutes there at the end could have maybe helped a lot.
One of the things I appreciated from the story in Mile 22 was that characters did have some depth to them. Mark Wahlberg’s character operates in a high stress environment and hasn’t taken a break for a holiday for a long time. As a result his character is a little edgy, always yelling and likely has a variety of psychiatric conditions that are developing or are already present. Lauren Cohan’s character is a mother and she struggles with the job working for Overwatch because she misses her family and we see this take a toll on her character as the film’s plot progresses. I wasn’t really expecting any depth to the characters at all in an action movie like this and was pleasantly surprised the film took the time to have some character depth.
The odd thing about Mile 22 was that the spy group they all work for is called ‘Overwatch’. I have no problem with the name, it works for the film very well. But some might find it a bit odd as the ‘Overwatch’ name is the same as one of the most popular video games out there at the moment. It’s just a coincidence I guess. But for some reason it felt odd hearing it so often. Maybe I play too much Overwatch.
If you’re going into this film wanting a pure action film experience this film certainly will deliver that for you. There’s car chases, shooting scenes and hand to hand combat moments. Each of the characters gets pretty messed up as the story goes on and the level of violence was just right in that it wasn’t too realistic but wasn’t too unbelievable either. My favourite scene in the film was during an attack on the Li Noor (Iko Uwais) character while he was getting a medical checkup. It was a hand to hand fight scene which went on for a bit but it was quite entertaining to watch and very rough!
Overall Mile 22 is worth watching this weekend at the cinema if you’re looking for a pure action film experience. The film will certainly deliver quite a few action moments during its 94 minute run time and they’re all well shot and quite entertaining to see. The story is a linear one but I appreciated that the characters had some depth to them, but was disappointed that the film ended quite quickly. I was impressed with Mark Wahlberg’s performance and he does always seem to deliver in action films, but I also really enjoyed seeing Lauren Cohan on the big screen and she did great in all her scenes. I do hope there’s more to come from her in the future in this film genre.
