Just like fast food chains make sure their menu items contain just the right amount of sugar, salt, and fat to make their products addictive, Netflix offers action movies that feel like they were created in a lab.
This doesn’t make them any less enjoyable as long as you recognize their artificiality and aren’t afraid to opt in. The latest example is The UnionWith a terrific cast led by Mark Wahlberg and Halle Berry, exotic locations, high-energy action sequences, and enough light humor to ensure that no one takes the events too seriously. It’s enjoyable enough entertainment that you instantly forget about it until the inevitable sequel arrives.
The Union
The essentials
No heavy lifting is required.
Release date:Friday August 16
Casting: Mark Wahlberg, Halle Berry, JK Simmons, Mike Colter, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Jessica De Gouw, Alice Lee, Jackie Earle Haley, Lorraine Bracco, Dana Delany, Patch Darragh, James McMenamin, Juan Carlos Hernandez, Stephen Campbell Moore
Director: Julien Farino
Screenwriters:Joe Barton, David Guggenheim
Rated PG-13, 1 hour 47 minutes
Wahlberg plays to his (shirtless) best as Nick, who deviates from the actor’s usual working-class persona only in that he’s a New Jersey boy rather than a Southerner. A construction worker (of course), Nick is the sort of regular working-class guy who drinks beers with his buddies at the local tavern and sleeps with his former seventh-grade English teacher (a sadly underused Dana Delany). Needless to say, Bruce Springsteen songs accompany him on the soundtrack.
His usual routine is suddenly interrupted by the unexpected appearance of Roxanne, his old high school sweetheart whom he hasn’t seen in 25 years. She enters his usual bar, surprisingly quietly despite being played by Halle Berry and wearing a skin-tight black leather outfit. The two enjoy a warm and friendly reunion outside, where she injects him with a sedative and knocks him out.
Nick wakes up in London, at the Savoy Hotel, where Roxanne and her boss Brennan (J.K. Simmons, exuding a wryness that only he can boast) inform him that he has been brought there to join their secret spy organization (see the film’s title for its name). Their special mission is to retrieve a MacGuffin, I mean classified data, that fell into the wrong hands after a botched mission involving one of the organization’s agents (Mike Colter). It seems they need a “nobodies, someone with no history,” since the identities of all the other American intelligence agents have apparently been compromised. Nick, like the film’s viewers, will just have to get used to it.
After meeting the other members of the team, including medical expert Athena (Alice Lee), fight…
