Mark Walhberg’s bond with ‘Mile 22’ director Peter Berg

Following a number of collaborations with filmmaker Peter Berg, it is probably safe to say Hollywood star Mark Wahlberg shares an amicable work relationship with his Mile 22 director.

The film, out now in the UAE, sees Wahlberg team up with Berg once again after working with him on past films, including Patriots Day, Deepwater Horizon and Lone Survivor.

“We get along tremendously well. My family gets along well with his family and my friends get along with his friends. We just have a good time,” said Wahlberg.

Berg, meanwhile, says he’s inspired by Wahlberg’s work ethics.

“Mark’s work ethic is probably better than mine, and I think mine’s pretty intense. He’s a very hard worker. I trust him to be there for me, and I think the feeling is mutual,” said Berg.

Written by Graham Roland and Lea Carpenter, Mile 22 is a story of an elite American intelligence officer who, with the help of the top-secret tactical command unit, tries to smuggle a mysterious police officer with sensitive information out of a foreign country.

Berg says it was a remarkable experience to shoot Mile 22 in just 42 days.

The movie was filmed between November 2017 and February 2018, with the majority of its interior shots taken in Atlanta, Georgia during the first five weeks, before the unit moved to Bogota, Colombia for the remainder of the shoot; that’s where the exterior action scenes were filmed.

“It was remarkable how President Santos [former Colombia President Juan Manuel Santos] and his government really opened up their city to us,” said Berg.

To lay the groundwork for filming an action drama, which involves multiple car chases, gunfire and explosions, the filmmaker started talking to officials of the Colombian government and the city of Bogota back in June 2017. One of the most important special permits the makers had to get was to allow aerial filming in what were normally the city’s no-fly zones.

“We were basically given keys to the city. We were allowed to go into their equivalent of Times Square and shut it down for 10 days and do some pretty hectic stuff. The fact that we were able to use the real city and interact with the real city in a pretty kinetic way really helped give us the look we were going for,” added Berg.

Indonesian actor Iko Uwais, who also stars in the film, bonded with Wahlberg on the film sets. The veteran actor adds he had a great time shooting with Uwais, calling him a “sweetheart”.

“He is spectacular and a sweetheart. Iko is very funny, very sweet too. We had a lot of laughs and I loved hanging out with his crew,” said Wahlberg. “He was teaching me Indonesian and I was teaching him a lot of English slang.”

Wahlberg was impressed with Uwais’ ability to feel comfortable in an environment that was infused with a lot of improvisation.

“I like to throw some curveballs and obviously we’re improvising within the context of the scene, and he just did an outstanding job,” he said.

Talking about his Hollywood debut, Uwais calls it a start of a new career. “This is really the beginning for me. It’s a perfect collaboration between martial arts and Hollywood action.”

Former UFC champion Ronda Rousey plays Samantha Snow, an elite CIA operative on an extraction mission in Southeast Asia. She briefly appeared in the films Furious 7 and The Expendables 3, but Mile 22 represents her first major action role, and along with her burgeoning career in the WWE.

Rousey’s second act is off to a rousing start.

She learnt to wrestle last year at the WWE Performance Centre in Orlando, Florida, where the training included plenty of tutorials on acting. But now she had to figure out the nuances of film, too.

“A lot of people doubt that anyone can master more than one thing,” Rousey told The Guardian newspaper during a press tour of the film. “And it’s easy to get stuck in [the mindset of] ‘you’re already good at this thing, you’re good at what’s comfortable,’ and it’s hard to try and learn something new with the world watching. Because the first time you master something, you do it in private. From the worst things, the best things have come as a result. Time is a great teacher. But I love those kinds of challenges and I love people doubting me.”