MILE 22

MA, 94 minutes

★★

It's still summer in the northern hemisphere, but Hollywood's blockbuster season has been over for a while. One unmistakable sign is the release of the latest hectic propaganda piece from director Peter Berg and star Mark Wahlberg.

Mark "tough guy" Wahlberg in Mile 22. Credit:AP

Heavy on shallow focus and jump cuts, Mile 22 aims, as ever, to rub our noses in the ugliness of American realpolitik while insisting that the world owes everything to tough guys (and gals) with the guts to get the job done.

A distinctive filmmaker but not a very gifted one, Berg has never made a priority of clear storytelling. But even by his standards Mile 22 has a weird opacity: it's almost a third over before it settles down into anything like an intelligible plot.