Mile 22 Movie Analysis

Li Noor is a triple agent that works for the Russians, infiltrated a police service in south Asia to then infiltrate the US embassy for the Russians! That is quite an achievement.

We shall wait with that and start with how Li looks a who he is.

Li is an Asian guy with short black thorny hair. He is verry muscular, as we see in a fight scene. He does not seem to be to empathic and mostly focuses on his job, to negotiate his way out of the country in exchange for the cesium. Throughout the movie Li does not speak to much, he mostly sits and fiddle with his fingers like he is meditating. But when he speaks, he keeps it short. His facial expression is mostly focused, and he does not express to much happiness during the course of the movie. 

The first time we see Li he is sitting in an apartment burning his passport and a picture of him. He burned his whole identity. As the movie progresses, Li shows up at the embassy with a disc that holds information on the cesium that the government wants to get away from the streets (it is an extremely dangerous substance). Obviously, Li gets captured and escorted into the embassy for interrogation. It turns out he and Alice have been in contact before about a cesium tip. Unsurprisingly, they argue about if the tip was real because the police did not find anything. It turns out it was real, and the police did not search thorough enough.

Nevertheless, back to the disc. The disc has an 8-hour timer that will destruct all the data if the timer is not disabled with a password. Li has the password, but he will not give it except if he gets to leave the country. This leads, not surprisingly, to another argument. They come to an agreement to help Li out of the country in exchange for the password. They begin the 22-mile journey across the city to the airfield where a plane will pick Li up and move him to America.

First of they need to put a tracer and heartbeat tracker in their arm. Li goes to the hospital room where they inject the little device in his arm. As it turns out, the doctors are working for the south Asian government, or police, and attempts to kill Li. They have an intense fight scene with much blood. This is essential for the reason that we get to know that Li is wanted by the country and that he needs a lot of protection in his escort to airfield. There for they Launch an Overwatch mission, which is the third instance after diplomacy and the army.

When everybody had prepared their gear, they go in to two military designed SUVs to transfer Li to the airfield. This bit that I will cover might be a bit disorganized, and that is because it is. Important to know here is that in the beginning there were a couple of shots of a big Russian plane. Keep in mind those guys, they are important here.

Of course, the drive will not be smooth sailing as they are hunted by motorcycle guys that are out to kill them and take away Li. After some time and gun fights, the convoy gets stopped and their cars get destroyed so they need to switch. Li gets left behind in the initial car for a bit and the “bad guys” comes up to Li in a try to get him. Li fights them of. The convoy gets a message of a new car that they can use. They get inside the car and the convoy is on the road again. My takeout here is that someone is clearly out for Li. 

I will jump over some parts now because nothing important for Li is happening. I will skip to a later part of the movie, when they get to a building to switch car again. Here Li makes the decision to help Silvia and the others from the Overwatch team. Li, for once, shows empathy for the others. Finally, we get character development for Li! They fight their way out of the building to get to the new car. They go the Airfield, where Li gives them the password for the disc. Now it gets exciting, remember the Russian plane I mentioned earlier? They are a flying command central that have been listening to the operation and hacked into their command center. This allowed the Russians to kill everyone in the command center and Li could take over the plane to a delightful victory.

Now when we have followed Li and his actions thru out the movie, I can say that my impressions of Li are that I like his style. He is a determined man who knows what he wants. He does not slip once and is calm all the way. He is ice cold. What I do not like about him is probably that he screwed everyone over.