The Union review
The Union is a woefully inadequate marriage of lackluster comedy, dull action and nonexistent chemistry with its two leads.
Its influences aren’t hard to spot. Plot points from various 007 installments, Mission: Impossible, Kingsman: The Secret Service and even Agent Cody Banks are pilfered for this lifeless spy thriller.
Halle Berry stars as Roxanne, a top operative of The Union, a peacekeeping spy group led by Tom Brennan (J.K. Simmons, Invincible). On a seemingly routine mission, her team including field agent Faraday (Mike Colter, Luke Cage) gets taken out and their asset killed. Tom and Roxanne suspect a mole in the Union prompting her to make a highly unorthodox call.
Enter Mike (Mark Wahlberg, Me Time), Roxanne’s old high school flame. He’s a basic loser working a dead-end job and his greatest accomplishment for the week is hooking up with his old seventh grade teacher (Dana Delany).
In maybe the most ludicrous premise of an action movie in all of 2024, Roxanne recruits Mike to be part of The Union — assuming her old high school flame was still a decent enough guy to help pull off this life-or-death mission. The potential mole would be able to ferret out another Union operative trying to solve the case, but a regular random dude just might be able to save the day.
That’s assuming the surviving members of Roxanne’s team, gadget guy Foreman (Jackie Earle Haley), fighting expert Frank (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje) and psychologist Athena (Alice Lee) aren’t the traitor.
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Screenwriters Joe Barton and David Guggenheim desperately want to make the Mike/Roxanne pairing so charming viewers can’t wait to see them together. The dialogue isn’t very convincing and doesn’t make a strong case for why Roxanne would possibly be interested in Mike. And it certainly doesn’t help the tepid chemistry with Berry and Wahlberg.
Director Julian Farino (Entourage) seemed to have high hopes for The Union giving it the full quality spy thriller treatment. From lavish hotels to street shootouts, Farino tries to capture that Mission: Impossible tone but delivering those legit thrills and excitement seem to be an insurmountable task. The action scenes come off sluggish as if the characters are moving in slow motion.
And Mike’s big training montage looks perfunctory to hopefully explain why he’s suddenly became a semi-competent Union agent in two weeks. This is where casting Wahlberg hurts the film as Mike should be a screw-up. The character in this setup who brings the laughs like Jackie Chan in The Tuxedo. Wahlberg isn’t the kind of performer who can pull off being a film’s funny guy.
Wahlberg has had a commendable acting career given he plays the same character — a broodingly intense version of Mark Wahlberg or a slightly goofy version of Mark Wahlberg. His best movies tend to be those when he’s opposite a far more dynamic entertaining performer — Will Ferrell, Kevin Hart, Christian Bale, Dwayne Johnson, Mos Def/Jason Statham/Charlize Theron/Seth Green and a talking teddy bear.
With the right material, Berry can carry a movie on her own just fine. She plays Roxanne cool and breezy but needed someone to play off against committed to being goofy. At least Simmons is always reliable while Haley and Akinnuoye-Agbaje are fine in supporting roles.
The script is far too predictable. If you’ve watched a spy film in the last 20 years, it’s not that hard to see how it’s going to play out. And there’s nothing here to justify taking this nearly two-hour below average basic spy slog.
Rating: 3 out of 10
Photo Credit: Netflix
Check out Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part 1 for a better spy thriller. Now available on Amazon.
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