Netflix's 'The Union' Is the Mark Wahlberg Of Mark Wahlberg Movies

By Petr Navovy | Film | August 20, 2024 |

By Petr Navovy | Film | August 20, 2024 |

I don’t even know where to start with a film like The Union, the new ‘spy action comedy thriller’ from Netflix. I suppose I could start by saying: ‘Hey, J.K. Simmons is in this! Who doesn’t love J.K. Simmons?’ Could I add anything else? Well, they do say that if you can’t find anything nice to say, you shouldn’t say anything at all. Unfortunately, I don’t think that applies to film reviews, so we might as well get this over with.

The Union is a bad film. It’s not good. It’s awful, as a matter of fact. Devoid of any craft, heart, humor, or point of view other than that of, ‘America good. Military good. Enemies bad’, which is one so frequently and heavily broadcast out into the world that I imagine even those species of newt that have lived in the pitch black of the bowels of deep forgotten caves for so long they have gone blind have gotten bored of it. Though, don’t misunderstand me, this isn’t a fiery and strident piece of U.S. military propaganda. It’s not overt. Like so many other similar projects, The Union doesn’t feel the need to convince the viewer of the righteous nature of the U.S. military and its various covert offshoots—instead, it’s treated as a matter of course. An axiomatic, foundational pillar of the world.

That was a whole lot of words used in that paragraph for a description I could have just as easily framed as: This film is the movie equivalent of Mark Wahlberg. This is convenient because it also stars Mark Wahlberg, a man whose inexplicably long career will undoubtedly be one of the pieces of evidence held up against us in the great cosmic judgment of humanity’s impact on the universe.

But I digress. Let’s take a step back for a second. The Union opens, as films often must, with a scene introducing the audience to its hero. Here it’s a bloke called Mike McKenna (Wahlberg), a Jersey everyman we first see exchanging some post-coital banter with his old English teacher after waking up in her bed, before having a flannel shirt for breakfast and then Jersey-ing his way across Jersey in his flannel shirt to do his job on a construction site. A few more flannel shirts for lunch and dinner, some tactically deployed Springsteen (you keep ‘The Promised Land’s’ name out of your mouth, The Union) and then it’s off to the Jersey bar with his Jersey buddies to drink some Jersey beers. In Jersey. I suppose the intended effects of Mark Wahlberg’s relentless blue-collar cosplay are relatability and down-to-earth charm, but here the patronizing facsimile must surely wear diaphanously thin even for those who are usually taken in by it. You’ve been an out-of-touch millionaire for decades, Wahlberg mate, just own it.

Before long, Mike McKenna’s dead-end and truly awful, steady paycheck working-class life is turned upside down when an old flame, Roxanne (Halle Berry) swoops into his bar. Roxanne, having disappeared one day after blah-blah-blah and before her and Mike could blah-blah-blah, now works for a none-more-covert, black-bag-trigger-happy U.S. military outfit called ‘The Union’. Yes, really. Whisking Mike away because the identities of all The Union’s operatives have potentially been compromised, Roxanne informs him that thanks to his anonymous blue collar existence he is the perfect candidate to join her on a mission to thwart those responsible for breaching the organisation’s security structure. One thing leads to another and blah-blah-blah explosions, blah-blah-blah poorly shot and choreographed, weightless action, blah-blah-blah forced romance, and it goes back and forth like that for nearly two hours until the movie just sort of ends.

Just like this review.

Because this asinine, anti-cinema pile of garbage doesn’t deserve anything more.