For Mike McKenna (Mark Wahlberg), life peaked in high school, while his then-love interest Roxanne Hall (Halle Berry) managed to escape the dead-end New Jersey job and travel the world. While he joined the local construction workers’ union, she joined the Union, a secret spy group about which Roxanne matter-of-factly claims, “Half the intelligence agencies don’t know we exist, and the other half regret finding out.”
“The Union” is a lame wish-fulfillment fantasy from Netflix’s Star Service department and is actually the story of a reunion — Mike and Roxanne — is set against the backdrop of a crisis we’ve seen too many times in recent spy movies. For Wahlberg, the desire is to be James Bond, something that will never be possible for the Dorchester-born American. And the fantasy is to play the next best role, recruited by former Bond girl Halle Berry (with her weirdest haircut since “Swordfish,” an anime-style pixie cut, shaved on one side, spiky on top and with blonde tips).
The film’s big idea is to force a blue-collar worker into a formulaic action movie, and the excuse is hardly a valid one. Someone has stolen “information on every man and woman who has ever served a Western allied country” (which sounds a lot like the plot of the NOC list from the original Mission: Impossible movie), and to get it back, the Union needs someone who isn’t on that list. They need a nobody, and Roxanne knows just the right man for the job.
Mike has been drinking at the same bar since Roxanne left him, hoping she’ll come back into his life. “Is it what you imagined?” Roxanne asks when she does. “I don’t know,” he says. “In my mind, you always wore a bikini.” Just more proof that the movie was made for 13-year-old boys, even if Wahlberg thinks he’s making this movie for the working folks back home. What else could he mean when his character says, “It’s nice to see yourself reflected on the screen”? He’s not drinking martinis in a tailored tuxedo, but that hardly feels like the representation Hollywood has been missing.
Again, it’s Wahlberg’s baby, and although the plot is reversed, it was actually he (as a producer) who hired Berry to play secret agents in disguise together. The two stars have known each other for decades, and that history – which comes through in spiteful “I guess that’s why we’re not together anymore” barbs and slightly flirtatious remarks – is the best thing about a film that could have used a lot more screwball comedy conflict. Instead, we get typical action trips to Trieste, London and Istria, where Mike faces challenges like driving on the wrong side of the road and jumping off a bridge onto a passing ship.
Wahlberg plays Mike as if he doesn’t want to do spy stuff, but the movie never gives him a compelling reason to join. Maybe he would have joined the Union if Roxanne had been kidnapped or if someone he knew (like Lorraine Bracco, who was completely drunk as his mother) was in danger, but as it’s written, the character agrees because the actor playing him likes the idea. I suspect Wahlberg is also responsible for recruiting director Julian Farino (who has nearly two dozen “Entourage” episodes to his credit). He can handle comedy, but action isn’t in the director’s blood, and that shows in the scenes recycled from the 007 and “Mission: Impossible” films.
After Mike agrees to join the organization, the film compresses a two-week training program (already cut from six months) into a trailer-length montage in which he meets other members of the Union: top boss Tom Brennan (JK Simmons), combat pro Frank Preiffer (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje), psychological evaluator Athena Kim (Alice Lee), and an underemployed IT guy who calls himself “the foreman” (Jackie Earle Haley). At times, “The Union” seems to imply that all of these agents were once honest, hard-working people like Mike—in which case, the organization’s name kind of makes sense—but if that’s true, then Roxanne doesn’t fit that profile.
Or maybe she does. The problem with “The Union” is that neither the film nor its characters have much personality, so it’s not even clear how they feel about each other. Revealing the villain would spoil a bit of a surprise, though it seems reasonable to complain about the cheap trick of insisting that said villain was once married to Roxanne. When all three characters are together, the film aims to stoke jealousy between Mike and his rival, but mostly it just freezes the chemistry that had been building between the former high school sweethearts while relegating Mike to the friend zone.
There’s something inherently appealing about Berry and Wahlberg as action stars. Both have excelled in the genre before: Berry’s intensity in the B-movie “Kidnap” is hard to match, while Wahlberg is at his best in “Patriots Day,” director Peter Berg’s portraits of real-life heroes. In “The Union,” it’s easy to tell that they’re doubled by stuntmen half the time, and when they’re not, none of the actors are very convincing — which is to say, rather than enduring the idea that a kid from New Jersey could be a spy, it destroys the previously established idea that Wahlberg should play one.
