Mile 22

I am a huge fan of espionage thrillers so I have been looking forward to Mile 22 since I saw the first trailer a few months ago.  James Silva (Mark Wahlberg) is an extremely volatile member of a covert and elite paramilitary group within the CIA known as Overwatch.  When a deadly radioactive isotope capable of leveling several major cities goes missing, Silva's team is tasked with finding it.  One of their informants, Li Noor (Iko Uwais), brings a disk containing the locations of this isotope to the American embassy in Indonesia.  He will give them the password if they give him asylum in the U.S.  The team must transport him, you guessed it, 22 miles from the embassy to an airfield for extraction and it seams everyone, from Indonesian agents to a random group of Russians, wants him dead.  The action in this movie is amazing, particularly during a fight between Noor and two potential assassins in the embassy while the former is handcuffed to a bed, during a high-speed chase between cars and motorcycles through city streets, and during a shoot-out in an apartment building.  It is intense, incredibly violent, and graphic but it is also riveting.  However, the editing is very chaotic with cuts that sometimes last for mere seconds.  The story is a mess and half the time I didn't know what was going on.  I enjoyed it much more after they got through the exposition in the first act and settled into the mission of transporting Noor and I liked the twist at the end which did clear up some inconsistencies (although it has a very ambiguous ending to set up a possible sequel).  The dialogue consists mainly of characters spewing vitriol, peppered with profanity, as fast as they can and it gets really old.  Most of the characters are extremely unlikable, especially Silva.  At one point several characters speculate about what kind of psychological disorder Silva might have and one of them says that he is just an asshole.  That's basically how I felt about him as well.  Wahlberg mostly glowers at the camera but I did like John Malkovich as the team's handler and I think Lauren Cohan has a few affecting moments as a team member with family issues.  Ronda Rousey is surprisingly good as another team member.  My reaction to this movie is much like my reaction to American Assassin.  It is somewhat entertaining but there is nothing that we haven't seen done better in other espionage thrillers.  Hardcore fans of the genre will probably like it more than the casual movie-goer.