By Charly SHELTON

Crossing the city in a car is no big feat. Twenty-two miles can fly by in about 20 minutes or so. That is if you don’t have an elite squad of mercenaries trying to kill you all the way. “Mile 22” follows a team of even elite-er CIA operatives who need to transport their asset from the embassy to the airport, 22 miles away, in 38 minutes.

When a situation like this arises, the loyal CIA operatives know they have to serve their country in a way that may not be strictly legal. This is a job for Overwatch – not the cartoony, Tracer and Junkrat kind of Overwatch, but the “murdering lots of people in creative ways in the name of patriotism” kind – which, now that I write it, I realize is kind of the same. So like the game but with more blood and not fun. This Overwatch is a specialized team of operatives that can execute a mission with surgical precision. But when an army of a seemingly unlimited number of mercenaries is thrown at the ground team on their 22-mile journey, it takes its toll on every member of the team.

Without giving too much of the plot away, it’s a really intense ride full of twists, turns, misplaced trust and super gory deaths. One more memorable death of a disposable mercenary soldier came from an improvised moment that brought newcomer Iko Uwais into the fold of a team that includes director Peter Berg and star Mark Wahlberg; “Mile 22” is their fourth movie together.

“Pete gave me and my team great trust on every fight scene, so we collaborated and we created,” said Uwais, who has been a fight choreographer on several other films and led the stunt team on “Mile 22.” “It’s a really new experience for me, because Pete doesn’t like the big fake [fight choreography], he just wants a real fight, real impact, real throw, real kick, and I really did it. So it was really easy for us to create the choreography.”

Wahlberg added more to the story. “[Berg] had so much trust in Iko that when we were shooting a big gun fight scene in Colombia, and Iko was just locked in a car, Pete said, ‘Hey, why don’t you choreograph another fight? Have a couple of guys run up and attack him,’ and the next thing you know, Iko’s just grinding this guy’s neck on the broken car window. And I thought ‘He really is one of us.’”

The overall film is a lot of fun and, although some of the subplots don’t really seem needed, the main story is enough to get by and the fight scenes make up for it.

There is a downside, however. Berg’s directorial choice of filming (what seems to be) every shot on a not-so-steady-cam is a major downside to the overall experience. It almost does a disservice to Uwais and his incredible stunt team because at times the camera is so shaky that you can’t make out the actual action of the fight, let alone when trying to sit through a swaying camera during a somber interview in an office. It works all right in some scenes with big, outdoor explosion-filled fights, but in a particularly well-choreographed fight in a small hospital room, the shakiness detracts from the work that went into making that fight so cool.

In the end, I really enjoyed the film, swaying aside. It is rated R for a really, really good reason. One fellow moviegoer in the screening I attended was very bothered by the violence and stared at the ground for a third of the picture runtime. If you are squeamish about violence or gore, this is not the film for you. If you like to see how creative someone can get in a desperate fight to the death, you will love this movie.

I give it 3.5 out of 5 stars.

  Charly Shelton