Just got back from the world premiere of Mile 22 in Westwood, Los Angeles, CA, at the Fox Village Theater on August 9, 2018.
Overall thoughts: the action was brutal and fun to watch at times, aside from the direction, which I"ll get to later (special shoutout to Iko Uwais for the fantastic martial arts choreo sequences), and the whole film had a highly rhythmic pace to it that was accentuated by Mark Wahlberg's James Silva's habitual rubber-band-wrist-snapping.
Unfortunately, those are really the only good parts of the movie.
The direction was sloppy; this movie transports me back to those days when "good action" was considered to be the camera being in the cast's personal space and cutting 5 shots in 2 seconds. So many quick shots happen you can't even tell what the hell is going on in a single room because you can't see anything other than some blurry hand rushing across the screen.
There is literally no character development and no resolution to any of the conflicts in the film. None. Every conflict that occurs in the film isn't solved, either because the film is too short to be able to cover any exposition for it, or because the film wants to shamelessly set up a sequel (let alone, a trilogy) to help flesh out this half-assed story that the audience is apparently supposed to care about. The film ends on a cliffhanger (I won't say what that cliffhanger really is, mostly because I'm actually still confused about it) that leaves the fate of some characters unknown and the audience wondering "That's it?" It's like the films thinks that somehow the audience wants more when the characters were barely explored and the action was generic at best.
Our characters begin flawed and end flawed; Mark Wahlberg's witty, brash, and comedic portrayal of Silva stays witty, brash, and comedic throughout the movie; in fact, it seems the character is only capable of responding in that way in the face of adversity and near-death experiences. Lauren Cohen's character, Alice, has a storyline focused on her personal life, evaluating her strained relationship with her ex-husband and her love for her daughter (the latter two have a whopping 5 minutes of screentime) that is never resolved or affected by the storyline of the film, or vice versa. Iko Uwais' character has motives only explored by a single line uttered by him, and nothing else, and we're supposed to accept that and be emotionally invested? The characters are given a backstory but not given the time or investment to tell audiences why they should care about these characters, and so when the cliffhanger occurs we're just left confused and annoyed that no characters learn anything through this 22-mile journey and no conflicts are resolved.
The film is also structured in such a way that it somehow is predictable; interspersed with the action are scenes of Wahlberg's Silva being interrogated during a government investigation, providing narration to the confusing action and even foreshadowing to the "big" cliffhanger and twist of the film, along with the suggestion that "something goes wrong" with this mission. It's been done before, and it makes the film so predictable.
The great thing about watching this on the premiere was I got free popcorn and soda, and I got to hear Mark Wahlberg stand up in the theater and shout "Can we start the movie?"
Overall thoughts: the action was brutal and fun to watch at times, aside from the direction, which I"ll get to later (special shoutout to Iko Uwais for the fantastic martial arts choreo sequences), and the whole film had a highly rhythmic pace to it that was accentuated by Mark Wahlberg's James Silva's habitual rubber-band-wrist-snapping.
Unfortunately, those are really the only good parts of the movie.
The direction was sloppy; this movie transports me back to those days when "good action" was considered to be the camera being in the cast's personal space and cutting 5 shots in 2 seconds. So many quick shots happen you can't even tell what the hell is going on in a single room because you can't see anything other than some blurry hand rushing across the screen.
There is literally no character development and no resolution to any of the conflicts in the film. None. Every conflict that occurs in the film isn't solved, either because the film is too short to be able to cover any exposition for it, or because the film wants to shamelessly set up a sequel (let alone, a trilogy) to help flesh out this half-assed story that the audience is apparently supposed to care about. The film ends on a cliffhanger (I won't say what that cliffhanger really is, mostly because I'm actually still confused about it) that leaves the fate of some characters unknown and the audience wondering "That's it?" It's like the films thinks that somehow the audience wants more when the characters were barely explored and the action was generic at best.
Our characters begin flawed and end flawed; Mark Wahlberg's witty, brash, and comedic portrayal of Silva stays witty, brash, and comedic throughout the movie; in fact, it seems the character is only capable of responding in that way in the face of adversity and near-death experiences. Lauren Cohen's character, Alice, has a storyline focused on her personal life, evaluating her strained relationship with her ex-husband and her love for her daughter (the latter two have a whopping 5 minutes of screentime) that is never resolved or affected by the storyline of the film, or vice versa. Iko Uwais' character has motives only explored by a single line uttered by him, and nothing else, and we're supposed to accept that and be emotionally invested? The characters are given a backstory but not given the time or investment to tell audiences why they should care about these characters, and so when the cliffhanger occurs we're just left confused and annoyed that no characters learn anything through this 22-mile journey and no conflicts are resolved.
The film is also structured in such a way that it somehow is predictable; interspersed with the action are scenes of Wahlberg's Silva being interrogated during a government investigation, providing narration to the confusing action and even foreshadowing to the "big" cliffhanger and twist of the film, along with the suggestion that "something goes wrong" with this mission. It's been done before, and it makes the film so predictable.
The great thing about watching this on the premiere was I got free popcorn and soda, and I got to hear Mark Wahlberg stand up in the theater and shout "Can we start the movie?"