The Union - Review

Rating: 3 out of 5

MARK Wahlberg and Halle Berry team up for Netflix's latest action-thriller, a highly derivative mix of Wanted, Mission: Impossible, Mr & Mrs Smith and Kingsman: The Secret Service, which entertains without ever coming close to the quality of any of its predecessors.

On the plus side, Julian Farino's movie makes good use of European locations - most notably London - while delivering some well-staged action sequences (a pre-requisite of getting this kind of thing right).

It also trades well on the undoubted chemistry between Wahlberg and Berry - who have been lifelong friends despite never having previously appeared on-screen together.

But on the down-side, the derivative nature of proceedings affords it few favourable comparisons (hence, most plot beats are easy to predict and formulaic), while the story itself (while also hopelessly generic) struggles to hold up to much scrutiny.

The story opens with a spy mission gone wrong, as a team from The Union of the film's title (a secret agency of blue-collar workers that goes under the radar), finds themselves ambushed and killed while attempting to extract a suitcase containing sensitive data surrounding the identities of every spy organisation around the world.

Needing a new face upon which to hang a credible retrieval mission, Berry's sole survivor Roxanne surprises her old high-school boyfriend Mike (Wahlberg) and recruiting him with a two-week intensive training programme.

Mike, meanwhile, finds the idea of saving the world an appealing distraction from his hum-drum blue collar life in Boston, where he serves as a construction worker, drinks at the same bar, beds his former teacher and lives with his mom.

Within days of completing his training, Mike and Roxanne are thrust into a globe-trotting adventure involving spy-craft, theft, deceit and danger - that uncovers more than either had bargained for, whilst rebuilding their own relationship.

From the get-go, The Union knows what it's meant to deliver and, for long periods, does so competently. It's further aided in this by a solid supporting cast, with the likes of JK Simmons and Jackie Earle Haley.

But while entertaining on its own limited terms, a lack of risk and a reliance on the over-familiar eventually undermine the film's ability to genuine excite and render things deeply forgettable, thereby putting the franchise potential that it wears so blatantly on its sleeve at greater risk.

Indeed, by playing things so risk-averse, there's only one sequence that really feels tense (unlike, say, Mission: Impossible, which often raises the stakes to breathless effect), while several feel like they're going through the motions despite being expertly staged.

Such shortcomings only to serve to shine a harsher spotlight on the many shortcomings of the script, which drops in some very dodgy exchanges and sometimes doesn't even make sense.

It's also difficult to gauge where the film's true allegiances lie - whether in recognising the virtues of the blue collar lives that it claims 'gets things done' without the recognition, or in the action and adventure 'better life' that Roxanne's character seems to represent by having successfully turned her back on Mike's environment (albeit with disastrous personal consequences for herself).

But then maybe I'm going too deep on this one. The Union may pay limp lip service to wider issues but, at its heart, is the type of Netflix-backed action thriller that delivers exactly what it says on the label: nothing more, nothing less. Taken on its own meagre terms, it's enjoyable enough.