Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Union’ on Netflix, a Terminally Bland Mark Wahlberg-Halle Berry Action-Comedy (2024)

Mark Wahlberg and Halle Berry team up for The Union, a new, distinctly Netflixian generi-thriller action-comedy of the type that the streamer loves to crank out on the regular. And why shouldn’t they? The likes of Spenser Confidential and The Mother (and other wholly forgettable ventures) do big numbers on Netflix – big, dumb, expensive movies that are perfect for unchallenging emptybrain weekend watching. It’s part of the Netflix brand now. Not that we’re pre-judging The Union, mind you; some of these films can be serviceable on their own terms (say, Extraction, or The Gray Man, of which I may be the only defender, albeit not all that passionately). So maybe Wahlberg and Berry can transcend expectations and generate a little excitement here? Hey, at least expectations are low!

THE UNION: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Mike McKenna (Wahlberg) is just your average Jersey schmoe – construction worker, in his 40s, lives with his mom (Lorraine Bracco), goes out for beerz with the guyz, has to start his ol’ pickemup truck with a screwdriver, has a one-night-stand with his former 7th-grade English teacher (Dana Delany!), etc. His better days seem to be behind him, but is he aware of that? He frankly doesn’t seem to be a self-reflective type. Just a party guy, woo hoo and all that, a Wahlbergian type who’s pretty thin on the screenplay page and not much thicker on the screen. He experienced troo luv back in high school with Roxanne Hall (Berry), who we meet in the cold open – she’s an international spy/agent/ops person who finds herself in a world of poop when a mission goes inside-outside-upside-down. Her husband/fellow spy croaks via sniper bullet during the parade of SNAFUs. She barely survives to go back home to Jersey and surprise Mike at the bar. It’s been decades. Just like old times, I guess.

Roxanne’s all come-hither smiles and motorcycles and leather with a shock-top of bleach-blond hair, like, hello there. Who could resist? They pour down a few and flirt and then she tranqs him and he wakes up in London. It happens! She needs a new recruit to join The Union. “Half the intelligence community doesn’t know we exist, and the other half regrets finding out,” is how she describes the org. They want blue-collar guys like Mike, who happens to be cut like a Masters of the Universe action figure, and he says OK fine, even though it means dropping off the grid for a crash-course spy-training montage and a highly secretive mission, and probably missing being best man in his homie’s wedding. I think he does this in hopes of rekindling a little sumpin’ with Roxanne? Or maybe he realizes he needs to put the kibosh on his going-nowhere life? Sure. Whatever. He just goes with it and the movie asks that we do the same even though we’re like this is the premise? Indeed. This is the premise.

About here is where we should get into the spy plot of it all, not that any of it matters in the least. I mean, this movie is so lazy, even the MacGuffin is half-assed: There’s a hard drive full of sensitive information and evildoers have it and The Union needs to get it back. That’s more than enough summary, trust me. The bad guys are invisible nobodies behind a scheme to auction off the hard drive to the highest bidder, and I apologize, because I said I wouldn’t summarize anymore, but I kinda had to in order to illustrate that none of the villains are worth mentioning in the movie-review sense where you name them (and follow that name with the actor name in parentheses). Some of Mike and Roxanne’s compadres are played by notables: J.K. Simmons as the no-nonsense boss, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje as another spy, Jackie Earle Haley as a tech guy. Will they thwart the dastardly scheme? Man, I’m getting bored – again, since I’m typing things about the stuff that already bored me once, while I watched it. That doesn’t bode well for this review.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: This watery, ten-times-removed Mission: Impossible wannabe may replace Red Notice as Netflix’s most memorably unmemorable action-comedy to date. It’s not as bad as Ghosted, an Apple TV+ outing that was not unmemorable for its utter soullessness. For what it’s worth.

Performance Worth Watching: We’re all for Halle Berry as an action star. She has the moxie and screen presence for it, easily. But she needs more John Wick 3s and fewer The Unions crossing her desk.

Memorable Dialogue: Ugh, I says, ugh:

Mike: Just call me the Jersey James Bond!

Roxanne: Double-O-go-f—k yourself?

Mike: Exactly!

Sex and Skin: No time for any of that.

Our Take: The Union prompts one to wonder, is it enough for a movie to give us a few halfway-decent action sequences, filmed primarily with practical effects instead of sh*tty CG? Obviously not. Director Julian Farino shows a bit of skill in piecing together chases and fights, but he’s working a screenplay that’s a barely noticeable shade better than the last entry in the direct-to-nowhere Sniper franchise. And every other damn movie these days is about the OPS. Have we had enough of the OPS? Yes. We’ve had enough of the OPS. Always with the high-tech whatchamajiggery and secretive planning and running and gunplay and earpiece comminiques and international locales and elaborate HQs and authoritative J.K. Simmonses barking orders inside a command center filled with monitors and dweebits in headsets typing at terminals. Every. Other. Movie.

Notably, the film’s attempts at comedy are as mired in the tarpits as Berry and Wahlberg’s romantic chemistry. It might aim for a little Mr. and Mrs. Smith action if it showed any gumption as it works through a sighworthy plot with a couple of bland switchbacks and feints, and a third act that becomes a hyperventilatingly tiresome game of Pass The Briefcase. I guess the film moves quickly and there’s a couple of Springsteen songs on the soundtrack, if you’re the type of person who likes to shout the word Bruuuuuce when ‘Born in the USA’ plays on the AM/FM. This is clearly a pretty well-paid gig for all involved parties, Netflix tending to dump a lot of money into star-driven action fodder that hogs the middle of the road for a couple weeks on the streamer’s top 10 before being replaced in one’s memory by a fresh wave of hedgehog memes. There’s no real creativity here. The Union is a business deal in movie form, and about as dully cynical as Hollywood gets.

Our Call: OK, I’m exaggerating. Truth is, you’ll forget this movie before the memes hit. SKIP IT.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.