Mile 22 (2018)

Elevator Pitch: Unknown to the general public the CIA has various levels of black op, maybe the most secret being “Overwatch”, an elite group of warriors with tech support who are constituted for only hours at a time. The group are searching for caesium, with some success in America, and later in Indo-something they are once more activated when a local policeman comes to the embassy with a deal, that he will provide information about a cache, if he is transported out of the country. So the group, with the policeman,  leave the embassy in the direction of an airstrip where a plane awaits. It is soon evident that they must fight every inch of the way.

Content: No sex or nudity, or drinking or smoking. Initially we see Overwatch at work in America, which involves a lot of people staring at computer screens, presenting information from the air (they command a drone), from security cameras and more, while the people on the ground do the job. There is a lot of gunfire. Later in Indo-something we see the same again, but now they start off in vehicles and are attacked by all sorts of enemies with explosives and machine guns. As a result they have to escape on foot, and at one point dash about in the corridors of an apartment block. Their numbers are reduced as time passes.

A View: What were they thinking! Well, the inclusion of Iko Uwais in the cast tells us. Some one had seen “The Raid” in which he starred, and thought they could do something similar. In the end it is the same old trope, of a person needing to be transported from one place to another against the odds, this time with a bit of added technology. I was struck by the fact that they seemed so willing to discard team members. The critics found it very confusing. Mark Walberg never stopped shouting unintelligibly. Not a watch even if you like this sort of thing.

Additional Info: It was supposed to be the first of a trio of movies, and a TV spin-off was planned. By 2020 none of these things have happened.