22 Miles Too Far

‘Mile 22’ is the latest joint effort from director Peter Berg and actor Mark Wahlberg, who previously collaborated on such movies as ‘Lone Survivor,’ ‘Deepshit (I mean Deepwater) Horizon’ and ‘Patriots Day.’  Given how those films were well received critically and commercially for the most part, they probably thought joining forces again in this latest release wouldn’t be a bad idea.  Well, they couldn't be more wrong.

 

‘Mile 22’ is a big dumb action movie with a thin and convoluted plot that makes even the most forgiving of viewers shake their heads in disbelief.  The story is stupidly simple.  Smart-mouthed operations team leader James Silva (Mark Wahlberg) and his hand-picked crew of black-ops badasses are presumably (but unofficially) troubleshooters for the CIA so as to provide Uncle Sam with “plausible deniability” in sticky and politically sensitive situations.  The film’s clever tagline even suggests that when diplomacy (Option 1) and military force (Option 2) are unsuitable or unavailable, Silva and his team including tough girls Ronda Rousey and Lauren Cohan give us the logical third option.  They do the necessary and dirty secretive "wet work" that others simply can’t be bothered with. In the case of ‘Mile 22,’ their "mission impossible" is to simply escort an Indonesian cop and Russian spy (Iko Uwais of ‘The Raid’ and ‘The Raid 2’) who asked to defect over 22 miles of Indonesian city streets to an airstrip where a C-130 awaits in exchange for intel regarding some nuclear material or other.  Doesn't matter in the final analysis really.

 

We've all seen these "running the gauntlet" type chase movies before, even if you don't remember any of them in particular because they're so damn forgettable.  The last one I've seen was 'The Assassin's Bodyguard' starring Ryan Reynolds and Samuel L. Jackson, which for all its faults had its enjoyable moments.  'Mile 22' in name and in style most resembles the 2006 Bruce Willis-Mos Def flick '16 Blocks.'  Don't remember that one you say?  I don't blame ya.

Grade: C-

 

Klan of the Black Man

According to that unimpeachable source of information known as Wikipedia, Spike Lee’s latest film (I don’t care what he calls it; it’s not a “joint” cus’ you can’t smoke and get high on it), ‘BlackKklansman,’ is a biographical dramedy based on the hard-to-believe but real life story of Ron Stallworth, a funky-groovy-cool cat of a detective in the Colorado Springs police department who somehow successfully infiltrated the local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan in the late 70’s.

 

So how did an Afro-haired dark-skinned brotha’ manage to ingratiate himself with a vile and despicable white supremacist brotherhood like the KKK (by which I don't mean Kim, Khloe and Kourtney)?  Not knowing quite what to expect, I admit I was half expecting some silly Wayans brothers shenanigans as seen in the movie ‘White Chicks,’ but thankfully that wasn’t the case at all. Stallworth (well played by John David Washington, whose father happens to be “The Equalizer” himself) merely misrepresented himself as an appropriately racist angry white male over the phone who’s interested in furthering the KKK's not-so-noble causes, and sold it so convincingly that he even fooled none other than David Duke (Topher Grace from ‘That ‘70’s Show’).  Any face-to-face was handled by his partner-in-deception, a fellow detective named Flip Zimmerman (Adam Driver), whose being Jewish only made screwing with the KKK that much more fun.

 

Timely, provocative and packed with wry humor, ‘BlackKklansman’ is as surely a byproduct of our troubled times as its protagonist was in his, a time when racial tensions are on the rise due to a spate of police shootings nation-wide which made Rodney King look like he got off easy and gave rise to the “Black Lives Matter” movement.  As such, ‘BlackKklansman’ may be Spike Lee’s most resonant and politically relevant movie since 1992's ‘Malcolm X,’ which interestingly and coincidentally enough featured John David Washington's famous dad in the title role.

Grade: A

The Spy Who Broke Up with Me

First of all, let me confess that even though I found her character in ‘That ‘70’s Show’ to be whiny and annoying, I’ve come to appreciate the body, ahem, the body of work of Mila Kunis with perhaps the sole exception of her turn in ‘American Psycho 2.’  Unlike her co-stars from ‘That ‘70’s Show,’ the versatile Ukrainian doe-eyed beauty moved on to a successful movie career with such films as ‘The Book of Eli,’ ‘Black Swan,’ ‘Jupiter Ascending,’ ‘Friends with Benefits’ and ‘Bad Moms,’ all of which I’ve seen somehow.  So when I heard about her new buddy spy action-comedy ‘The Spy Who Dumped Me’ with SNL’s Kate McKinnon, I thought I'd keep the streak alive.

 

Spy comedies are a genre unto itself.  There are kid-friendly fare like ‘Spy Kids’ and ‘Agent Cody Banks,’ then there are more adult-oriented releases such as ‘Kingsman,’ ‘Mr. & Mrs. Smith’ and Melissa McCarthy’s hilariously subversive ‘Spy.’  The R-rated TSWDM falls comfortably under the latter category.  The story of how a bored and lonely girl-next-door (Kunis) and her wild and crazy “bipolar” best friend (McKinnon) got swept into international intrigue and danger after the former's CIA spy boyfriend dumped her merely formed the backdrop for the near non-stop series of cartoonish gags and misadventures in TSWDM.  It’s best not to overthink it too much.

 

While the humor in TSWDM is uneven and misfired as much as they hit our funny bones, there is an endearing quality to the film that I can’t deny which can’t simply be explained away by Mila’s unassuming charisma and charm.  They aren’t exactly Laurel and Hardy, but Kunis and McKinnon are an odd couple (akin to Melissa McCarthy and Sandra Bullock in 'The Heat') who made for a decent comedic duo.  It’s really not their fault that the script by Susanna Fogel (who also directed) and David Iserson didn’t quite live up to their talents.

Grade: B

Making the impossible possible, again

The history of the ‘Mission Impossible’ film franchise bears an uncanny resemblance to that of ‘Fast & Furious.’  Like F&F, it started out decently enough (for MI it was 22 years ago) but by all accounts lost steam by the third movie.  Then, just when people left the series for dead it’s suddenly not only revived but reinvigorated, getting a new lease on life and becoming even more popular with each successive release.  So it was that after MI3 reached a low point in the series, MI got a much needed makeover á la James Bond and Tom Clancy video game-esque subtitles like ‘Ghost Protocol,’ ‘Rogue Nation’ and ‘Fallout.’ 

Thanks to the franchise’s surprising longevity, 56-year old Tom Cruise (though admittedly he doesn’t look a day over 40) reprises his role in this sixth entry as Ethan Hunt, de facto leader of the super-secret black-ops outfit known as Impossible Mission Force (because they go on “impossible” missions should they choose to undertake them, duh!).  Taking place two years after MI5 aka ‘Rogue Nation,’ ‘Fallout’ sees the IMF attempting to recover stolen nukes and save the world again, globe-trotting across Europe and crossing paths with the ex-British spymaster-turned-terrorist from the previous installment, Solomon Lane (Sean Harris).

My expectations for ‘Fallout’ were impossibly high.  While I didn’t consider it worthy of its stellar 97 percent “fresh” rating on the aggregate review website Rotten Tomatoes, ‘Fallout’ is nonetheless another solid if somewhat safe and familiar entry in the action-espionage thriller subgenre.  The action in 'Fallout' comes typically “fast and furious” as we might expect, but its many perfectly timed and preternaturally coincidental set-piece action sequences (another characteristic it shares with ‘Fast & Furious’) have become a bit tired and overcooked.

Grade: B+