PLOT: Mike is happy living a simple life as a construction worker in his native New Jersey – until his long-lost high school sweetheart, Roxanne, shows up with more on her mind than romance. Knowing he’s the right man for the job, she recruits Mike on a dangerous intelligence mission in Europe that thrusts them back together into a world of spies and high-speed car chases, with sparks flying along the way.
REVIEW: Spy franchises work when the main characters are augmented like Jason Bourne or elite veterans like James Bond and Ethan Hunt. When starting a new franchise, it is tricky to balance it and make it believable that an average nobody can quickly become a hero. The Union represents Mark Wahlberg’s second attempt in three years to play a seemingly average guy who has hidden skills that make him a vital resource to save the world. In 2021’s Infinite, that concept was dead on arrival, but Wahlberg is trying again with The Union. Partnering with Halle Berry along with J.K. Simmons, Mike Colter, and more, The Union is yet another run-of-the-mill action movie that tries to play with the spy genre to generate another Mission: Impossible but fails to find the spark that you need to light the franchise fuse even with the star power of Wahlberg and Berry front and center.
The Union opens with Roxanne Hall (Halle Berry) and Nick Farrow (Mike Colter) on a mission in Italy to recover a stolen data drive when enemy agents kill everyone and take the device. With the blessing of her boss, Tom Brennan (J.K. Simmons), Roxanne heads back to her childhood hometown in New Jersey to recruit the perfect agent for the job. That is where we find Mike McKenna (Mark Wahlberg), a construction worker who still lives at home with his mother Lorraine (Lorraine Bracco) and sleeping with older women like Nicole (Dana Delaney) as well as drinking at the local bar with his friends from high school. Roxanne, Mike’s former girlfriend who broke up with him when she went off to college, reveals that she works for a covert agency known as The Union. What makes The Union unique is that they exclusively hire working-class people rather than military experts or career law enforcement to fly better under the radar. That includes physical trainer Frank Pfieffer (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje) and tech expert Foreman (Jackie Earle Haley), who used to be a foreman in an Amazon facility. With only two weeks to prep Mike, the team gets to work, and we get the tried-and-true montage sequence.
Roxanne makes a flippant remark that they normally get six months to prep an agent but have only fourteen days to get a 47-year-old guy who has never left New Jersey to be a competent and functioning spy, which strains every possible definition of credulity. Mike learns to expertly drive sports cars, run across rooftops blindfolded, and endure reflex and memory tests because he already knows how to do so much working as a welder on skinny rooftop worksites. I mean no disrespect to construction and other essential workers, but it is a bizarre concept to select superspies. Once in the field, Mike and Roxanne try to track down Juliet Quinn (Jessica De Gouw) before the data is sold to enemy factions, who will discover the names and locations of agents, including those employed by The Union. There is also a potential mole embedded within The Union that throws another wrench into the already convoluted plot. By this point, we are forty minutes into a one-hundred-minute running time, well past the time to ratchet up the action.
That may be the inherent issue with The Union: it is not all that exciting. We are introduced to Roxanne’s team, who mysteriously disappear during the key third-act sequences of the film, so the focus remains on Wahlberg and Berry. While the credit sequence shows off photos of the two actors in the 1990s when they first met, there is little chemistry between them. While both Wahlberg and Berry convincingly play characters in their mid-forties, only Berry seems to have the vigor to play an active spy, while Wahlberg seems to be along for the ride. In many ways, Berry plays Roxanne as a blend of her characters in Swordfish and her Bond girl Jinx. Had the story done away with Wahlberg’s Mike entirely and made this a vehicle for Halle Berry on her own, I think it may have turned out a lot better. J.K. Simmons is likable enough as the gruff boss, and Jackie Earle Haley is underused in what could have been a cool Q-esque character. Wahlberg’s attempt to play an affable everyman fails utterly and completely.
Written by Joe Barton and David Guggenheim (Designated Survivor), The Union comes from veteran television director Julian Farino, who has most recently worked on series like Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Ballers, In Treatment, and Florida Man. There is nothing nearly on par with Farino’s filmography that shows he could handle big-budget movie action sequences, and apart from the solid third-act rooftop and car chase scenes, he does not have that much to do. The movie has a decent soundtrack and some solid location shooting in London and Trieste, but there are equally as many scenes that look like they were shot on a soundstage. The script also tries to add comedic moments meant to lighten the tone, but then the film digs into the action-angle and undermines the dramatic tension. Had this movie been a comedy, it may have worked better as Wahlberg feels very out of place amongst the otherwise solid ensemble. I appreciate the soundtrack and attempt to craft a workmanlike atmosphere, but it never really comes together.
The Union is ultimately a waste of talent and a promising concept with the miscasting of Mark Wahlberg, who has long made it his bread and butter to play average guys. With a sore lack of chemistry between Wahlberg and Halle Berry, The Union feels forced and never turns into the thrill ride it should have been. While the final half-hour is pretty fun, it cannot salvage the weak movie that preceded it. Halle Berry remains an entrancing screen presence, which should have been a franchise-starter for her and her alone. I wish I had enjoyed this movie more, but it is another bland action movie on Netflix that is mercifully less than two hours long. You are in trouble when the brisk running time is all you can say positively about a film.