Tonight I tried to watch a movie called "Mile 22" starring Mark Wahlberg and directed by Peter Berg. They have made a reliable action team in the past: "Lone Survivor", "Patriot's Day" and "Deep Water Horizon" were all pretty good I thought. I don't like too many current movies, as you know, but I can appreciate the occasional action flick if it's well done, and the Berg/Wahlberg team has churned out some good ones. They have a formula that works, or at least it did until now. "Mile 22" is about an elite, super secret CIA team that takes out terror suspects before they can strike a target. I was hoping for some hints, if you will, because I was dead center at the most super secret thing that has ever happened on US soil, and I have been searching for answers about it ever since. I've even written to the CIA about it, as you also know, so even though I knew this movie would be "Hollywoodized", I was still ready to give it a chance, just because - this being a movie about a CIA hit team - I was hoping for any small bit of info to slip through.
Right off there were problems. The team is staking out a suspected enclave of Russians who are living in an upper middle class neighborhood on the East Coast. It is woodsy and looks like Long Island. But right off, you've got the ultra modern PC combination of CIA agents. You've got Rhonda Rousey and another chick who looks like a buffed up version of Courtney Cox. Another guy has a man bun.
So right away I was going.......hmmmm, while in my mind the clock was going tick, tick, tick.
What I witnessed in 1989 was not slick or PC, the agents were obviously ex-soldiers (as the folks in the movie are supposed to be), but they looked and acted like the real thing, and what I saw was The Real Thing. Pure terror, a feeling you never forget for as long as you live.
Watching Federal agents of this type in action is like watching combat in war, because there are no rules, such as there are for police officers.
This "no rules" aspect is depicted briefly in the opening scenes, but it is done in a very slick and non-believable way, with the two buffed out Hollywood chicks and the Man Bun Guy acting badass while they exterminate the last few remaining Russians in the house.
Sorry, but that ain't what it looks like. What it looks like is so awful that they've gotta erase your brain when it's over, so you won't remember what you saw (at least for a while).
Well, there's no point in yammering on about it. I shouldn't have expected anything real from this movie in the first place. I just hoped it would have the same quality I had come to expect from the other films mentioned above, and it did not. It was hyper-edited from the get go, and Marky Mark's character has attention deficit disorder on top of that (no kidding), and he talks so fast that you can't keep up, and the Hollywood CIA Chicks talk even faster to try to maintain communication, and the whole thing had me ready to hit the Eject Button from about the five minute mark onwards.
If there are actually people who can pay attention to a film this hyperactive, then that may explain things like the Tailgating Phenomenon, where I have someone within a car length of my back bumper no matter where I go or how fast I am going. These are not good things, these kinds of movies, because they hype people up even further than they are already hyped.
The turn off point came at around 28 minutes in, when a CIA information chief is holding a meeting regarding the takedown of the Russian house on Long Island. Lacking a real screenwriter - perhaps the #1 problem in modern movies - director Berg went with the lines the amateur so-called screenwriter wrote for the character at that point, which was just a string of expletives, f-words and s-words non-stop for about thirty seconds.
That's what you call No Talent, and so the Stop Button was pushed, followed quickly by the Eject.
If you ever wonder why I watch old movies almost exclusively, now you know.
Most new movies suck. Not all, but most. Anyhow, avoid this one like the plague. /////
What I did was to switch to an episode of "Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea", because you can never go wrong with that show. Because it is a night off for me, I had time for an episode of "Tales Of Tomorrow" as well. This one was called "Blunder" and was about a scientist and his wife who live alone in a hut in Antarctica. They have been working on a project to split the bismuth atom, which has been thought to be un-fissionable. If they succeed, the whole of the Earth could be powered for centuries, for bismuth is clean and easy to produce. Scientists in the States have discovered a flaw in the theory however, which could lead to the exploding of Earth's atmosphere if the scientist carries out his experiments without further caution.
Man what a show! Can you believe that these were the kind of subjects they showed on broadcast TV in 1951? Yep, and if you saw the ending to this episode, you would say another "wow". Or maybe "yikes"!
My evening's viewing was rescued, then, from being a total loss, thanks to two great TV shows.
I had a nice hike at O'Melveny this afternoon. The bees were out in force, and while I "ain't skeered" of 'em no more, and walked right past the bushes of purple wildflowers they were working on, buzzing away ominously, I had to draw the line further down the trail where it became jungle like, so thick was the overgrowth. There, the buzzing grew louder and I saw a single bumblebee flitting about.
Well doggone it, I've been working since I was five on not being frightened of bees, but bumblebees are a different story! Those things don't even seem to know where they are going. They could bump into you at any moment (bumble bumble), and they sound like jet engines.
So I turned around and went back, but it was okay because my hike up to that point was awesome. I walked back past the regular bees, which are not scary anymore, and all was well. :)
I hope you had a nice day. Can you believe we're in May already? Good grief, Charlie Brown!
Sleep well and I will see you in the morning, with much love sent as always. xoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
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