Plot: Dan Morgan loves his quiet suburban life as a devoted husband, father of three and successful car salesman. But that’s only half the story. Decades earlier, he was an elite government assassin tasked with eliminating the world’s deadliest threats. When enemies from his past track him down, Dan packs his unsuspecting wife, angsty teen daughter, pro-gamer teen son and adorable 10-month-old baby into their minivan and takes off on an impromptu cross-country road trip to Las Vegas. Determined to protect his family — while treating them to the vacation of a lifetime — Dan must put his long-dormant skills into action, without revealing his true identity.
Review: Mark Wahlberg‘s recent output has been mixed at best. For every solid acting project (Father Stu, Joe Bell), Wahlberg has churned out awful action (Infinite), terrible comedy (Me Time), and a couple of attempts at franchises (Uncharted, Spenser Confidential). The actor’s latest project blends humor and action in The Family Plan. Playing an assassin turned family man, Mark Wahlberg finds a solid balance to his strengths in a movie that is better than I was expecting it to be. There is something for everyone, with enough violence to appease the older crowd and laughs for everyone else. Mixing a road trip movie with conventions of the spy genre, The Family Plan has a lot going on, but more of it works than doesn’t for a reliably average watch this holiday season.
The Family Plan opens with Dan Morgan (Mark Wahlberg), a seemingly average suburban dad. He works at a used car lot and hates technology, much to the chagrin of his rebellious daughter Nina (Zoe Colletti) and aspiring gamer son Kyle (Van Crosby). With an infant in tow, Dan lives a safe and vanilla life with his adoring wife, Jessica (Michelle Monaghan). When his face accidentally appears in an Instagram photo, Dan’s former employer McCaffrey (Ciaran Hinds) sends every killer he has after his former protege. Dan is, in fact, a master assassin who left that old life behind to raise a family with Jessica, who has no clue about her husband’s past. Taking the family on a road trip from Buffalo, New York, to Las Vegas, Dan must dispatch mercenaries and killers while keeping up the guise he is just an average Joe.
The plot of the film does not take long to get going, having established Dan’s past pretty quickly as the film settles into about an hour of the clan traversing the United States with thugs and killers in hot pursuit. Having to fight guys on motorcycles and on a college campus with his family on the other side of a wall, Mark Wahlberg gets quite a workout in hand-to-hand combat and chase sequences, accentuated by the need to keep it quiet from his clan. The fights are all well shot even if the plotting stretches logic in hiding what is going on through the use of noise-cancelling headphones and misdirection. Still, the action is familiar but still fun to watch and Mark Wahlberg is still physically up for the challenge. The recurring gag that toddler Max sees everything but cannot say a word proves to be cute but not as funny as it should be. There are also the subplots involving the kids as well as Jessica’s high school career as a decathlete which obviously factor into the overall plot, giving The Family Plan an opportunity to feel like a family film rather than a spy movie.
Once the family reaches Las Vegas, the tone shifts into full action mode as Dan reveals the truth as McCaffrey and his mercenaries come down on their targets. The Vegas setting offers a chance to put Wahlberg and Monaghan into sexy outfits before a hail on gunfire comes down as well as throwing in the requisite marketing plugs for popular esports game Valorant, showcased by Kyle participating in a gaming competition, as well as Wahlberg’s own Flecha Azul tequila which gets the most blatant focus since Wahlberg downed a Bud Light in Transformers: Age of Extinction. I can say that Ciaran Hinds, ever reliable as a bad guy, chews the scenery well with his leather jacket and slicked back hair telling us he is a villain before he even utters a word. The only other significant standout is Maggie Q who appears in a few key sequences that offer some of the better moments in the movie.
Directed by Simon Cellan Jones, who followed up The Family Plan with the upcoming Mark Wahlberg movie Arthur The King, lensed this movie as conventionally as possible. There is little flair or distinctiveness to the way The Family Plan looks, similar to AppleTV+ spy comedy Ghosted, helmed by fellow Brit, Dexter Fletcher. Jones is a veteran television filmmaker and does the best that he can with the script by David Coggeshall which ticks all of the boxes for the genre. There are multiple bait-and-switch moments meant to lull us into predicting what the characters will do before they do something else that we expected them to do. It may sound like I am down on these moments, but overall the movie does work the way that it should. Just because it is familiar and conventional does not mean that it is a bad movie. The Family Plan is fun for what it is and offers Mark Wahlberg one of the better roles he has had recently, but it could have been so much more.
If you like movies where an actor over the age of fifty takes off his shirt, fights bad guys, and occasionally delivers a funny one-liner, you could stream Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning or No Time To Die. But, if you want to watch the movie with your significant other or family members up for more laughs than bullet wounds, The Family Plan is exceptionally satisfactory for your needs. There is fun to be had in this movie, but it is perfectly suited to be watched on AppleTV+ rather than on a big screen. I guarantee you will find some things to like in this movie but I sincerely doubt that you will love it. Enjoyed for what it is, The Family Plan is a solid timewaster when wrapping presents this Christmas season.