Like a good covert operation team, everyone involved in the latest in a long line of expensive yet generally forgettable Netflix action flicks is clear on the mission. They know their role, and what they’re being paid for. Mark Wahlberg, playing to type as a downhome blue-collar guy, enters the movie shirtless. Halle Berry, as a veteran intelligence agent, kicks ass while wearing a Catwoman-esque all-leather uniform. JK Simmons, as the head of a covert group of working-class secret agents (hence, the Union), conveys no-nonsense avuncular authority as only JK Simmons can. And Julian Farino, director of such shows as Giri/Haji and Entourage, wrings each of the many combat scenes for snappy but never stressful suspense.
The fictional purpose, besides a vague sense of justice, is never totally clear however. Nothing in The Union is subtle, including its hope that the star power of Wahlberg and Berry will paper over a set-up that feels dubious even by silly caper standards. Berry’s Roxanne is a longtime operative for this secret federal agency (maybe?) of blue-collar workers that goes under the radar, gets by on its unpretentious efficiency and disdains the CIA for its elitism. The film opens with the Union in crisis, as a mission to extract a CIA defector in Trieste goes awry, leaving several agents dead, including Roxanne’s closest partner Nick Faraday (Mike Colter). For quickly stated reasons, a “nobody” is needed to complete the mission. Enter Wahlberg’s Mike, Roxanne’s high school sweetheart.
Mike has what Roxanne derisively calls a “small” life in the same old New Jersey home town. He lives with his mom (Lorraine Bracco), is very close with his childhood friends, works in construction; and there’s a recurring bit about his recent dalliance with their seventh-grade English teacher. The script, by Joe Barton and David Guggenheim, gives suitable texture to Roxanne and Mike’s bond, but The Union benefits tremendously from its leads. Wahlberg and Berry, friends for over 30 years (with some early 90s photos in the credits to back it up) have well-worn, warm chemistry from the jump, and are convincing as two people still immediately able to rib – and charm – each other despite not talking for 25 years. Of course he accepts being drugged and whisked to London, then participating in a potentially lethal mission, if it means sticking with her.
Naturally, he’s won over by the ethos of the union: little guys sticking it to the big-moneyed evil ones (cartoonish Iranian terrorists, North Korean operatives, Russian spies, debonair Londoners). Or, as Simmons’s director Brennan puts it: “Street smarts over book smarts. Blue collar, not blue blood. People that build our cities, keep production lines humming, that’s who we are. We get shit done. ’Cause people like us are expected to get shit done, ’cause nobody ever handed us anything a day in our lives.”
The murkily explained mission is to steal back government intel on anyone who has served a western-allied country, kept in a comical Deal or No Deal briefcase, thus continuing to protect the people. The inchoate class politics gives the film more than a whiff of pandering. That it still mostly works is down to to Simmons and Wahlberg, both adept at playing winsome normal folk, and of course Berry as a hyper-competent fighter straining to contain her emotional vulnerabilities.
For the vast majority of its 1 hour, 47-minute runtime, The Union keeps up a pleasurable rhythm of information, mission, combat and flirting, through increasingly eye-rolling plot turns and a car chase in Croatia that seems to last for ever. The mood is light, the stunts impressive and, mercifully, the film is not nearly as cheap-looking nor dull as Netflix brethren such as The Man from Toronto or Lift.
The two stars often come off more as exes turned friends than romantic interests. Spoiler alert: The Union is in the frustrating Twisters club of denying audiences a kiss for no discernible reason, other than maybe holding out for a sequel. For all the petrol, broken glass and stuntwork lavished on The Union, I can’t confidently say it has enough juice for that, but it at least rises above expectations.
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