Confession: I love movies where well-trained people execute missions. Most of the best such movies involve criminals robbing banks or cops taking the law into their own hands, or, as in this case, special forces military teams killing people. I think all of that stuff is bad; it’s still fun to watch on a big screen. I think we should feel some conflict about this, even if we ultimately decide to enjoy it anyway, and I think the filmmakers ought also to consider their role in all this.
Peter Berg has, as far as I can tell. For the first 89 minutes, Mile 22 seems like basically a cocaine-infused sales pitch for a “shoot first, torch the diplomats” foreign policy. But in the final minute, Berg audaciously points his finger directly at us, Americans, munching down popcorn and celebrating the casual deaths of nameless foreign villains, our paychecks funding stealth bombers and inflating the profits of movies celebrating American imperialism alike, and asks us to consider our own complicity in all this violence (it’s notable this movie was financed mostly by Chinese investors). Not that he exonerates himself, either—no other action director seems so ambivalent about the distinctively American violence they put on screen.
I don’t know what to make of this. One reaction, embodied in the character of James Silva (Mark Wahlberg), is to yell and scream at everyone and everything. Somehow, I don’t think that will help things.
Say hello to your mother for me.