Cop Li Noor (the amazing Iko Uwais, from The Raid) wants to help the Americans, but he’s hidden the whereabouts of a radioactive dust on a high-tech disc that will self-destruct in eight hours. The frenzy gets your heart pumping double-time, but it also distracts you from the fact some awfully ridiculous stuff is going down. Oh, and close-ups of Mark Wahlberg’s James Silva snapping the yellow elastic band around his wrist that’s what he does to calm himself down. Like a cinematic Cuisinart-iste, director Peter Berg slices and dices everything into his action sequences-including information being live-fed back to headquarters from the special ops on a mission in a fictional big foreign city.Ĭue tactical forces taking mouth swabs and dental impressions from Russian operatives, computers uploading that data, and monitors tracking the blood pressure of the American squad to make sure they’re… Nervous? Dead? Throw in far-overhead shots of cars going boom in city streets, bullets ripping through limbs, triggers being pulled, and tires screeching.
We’re not just talking timeworn digital countdown clocks and back-and-forth cuts between the real action and multiple security-cam angles. To ratchet up the tension in an action flick about a secret CIA mission, Mile 22 takes editing to maniacal new levels.