The making of ‘Mile 22’
Director Peter Berg talks about the film and his ongoing partnership with lead actor Mark Wahlberg
In Mile 22, the new thriller from Peter Berg, Mark Wahlberg stars as Jimmy Silva, leader of an elite paramilitary team charged with transporting foreign intelligence asset Li Noor (The Raid’s Iko Uwais, in his first major Hollywood role), from the relative safety of a US Eembassy in Southeast Asia to an airfield for extraction – a distance of 22 miles. With Noor holding the key to encrypted information needed to prevent an imminent terrorist attack, Silva’s team (featuring Ronda Rousey and The Walking Dead’s Lauren Cohan), must fight their way, mile by mile, through a dangerous urban landscape as local forces close in, determined to prevent his escape.
Mile 22 marks the fourth collaboration between Berg and Wahlberg.Berg discusses the making of the new film and their ongoing creative partnership:
What is it about working with Mark Wahlberg that keeps you coming back for more?
I think he’s just a very talented actor – that’s a given. But he’s also like a brother. We get along very well. We like the same sports, we like the same wine, we have kids the same age.
Our work ethics are similar. And so there’s a great affection and trust which makes for a fun work environment. And I believe it should be fun to go to work every day. I’ve been on film sets where there’s a lot of divisiveness and contention, creative heat and all that stuff. That can work for some people, but for me that’s a bunch of bull****. I like to have fun.
What’s your collaboration like on set?
People ask why we keep working together. Mark for me falls into a sweet spot where I can trust him to either figure out things that I’m not seeing as far as [the] character [he is playing] goes. He’s very vigilant about coming to me and making sure I’m paying attention.
For me that’s a partnership.Why did the two of you want to make this film and why the break from true-life stories? Having done three true stories [Lone Survivor, Deepwater Horizon and Patriots Day], we wanted to do something [different] for many different reasons. We both saw The Raid, and the sequel to it, and felt Iko Uwais is so unique and so talented, and brings so much art to these combat films, that it would be really fun for us to work with him.
We wanted to do something fictional. I had an idea for this tight little action film ... We figured if we could get him, we’d do it and we were lucky to get him.
What was it like working with Iko Uwais?
One of the things I found really interesting was that Iko came with some of his guys from Indonesia. And he had to work with some pretty accomplished US stunt guys who are like, “We have our way of doing things”.
Everyone was sort of sniffing each other out at first and my hope was that these guys would see there’s something they could learn [from him]. I wasn’t sure that it would go that way but Iko disarmed them all so quickly. They let Iko take the lead. And it was a beautiful thing to watch.The film’s opening sequence features a clip of Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un, amongst others.
What’s the underlying idea behind the sequence?
This is a work of fiction. But it’s about the CIA’s Ground Branch [part of the agency’s Special Activities Division, responsible for covert operations] which really exists. So we talked to a company that does opening credits and I’m like, “Let’s do something that feels like it’s got one hand in reality”. That credit sequence was me saying ... “Can we do something that feels current? That makes people go, ‘Wait a minute. Was the Ground Branch behind this? Suddenly Trump and North Korea are sitting down shaking hands? Maybe something else was going on’.”
What was it like shooting in Bogota?
We were a bit sceptical, particularly our production guys, about how feasible shooting big action sequences – shooting anything really in Colombia – was. [For this] we were talking about gun fights and explosions right in downtown Bogota.
So we went down there and met with President Santos who was relieved it wasn’t a film about cocaine. But then quickly [we] had to be like, “But we are going to blow up everything in your city ...” [laughs].I think they saw we were responsible and professional. And we truly had a wonderful time.
Do you want audiences to enjoy the film as pure entertainment or to leave thinking about what’s going on in the world? I think both.
This is a visceral experience and that’s what I like when I go and see an action film. I want to forget about everything and just be pulled into it. That’s the primary goal. If, afterwards, people Google “Ground Branch” and go, “Holy s***, this stuff really exists” ...
Mile 22 opened on Friday September 7.
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