I felt every minute pass during The Union. Netflix gets a lot of crap for making movies so generic and bland that they barely feel like movies. The Union is so uninspired, so bereft of entertainment, that I should be able to file a grievance.
Julian Farino’s The Union is, simply put, a waste of time. Everyone’s time; yours, mine, and the people who made the movie. The film critic Gene Siskel would famously ask, “Is this film more interesting than a documentary of the same actors having lunch?” Reader, I tell ya, having sat through The Union, a documentary about the hiring of the catering service would be more interesting.
Modern Hollywood hates audiences, as a concept, so much that they seem hellbent on casting big names that have no chemistry with each other. It used to be you would at least do screen tests to see if the stars clicked, to see if there was something to watch. I suppose they did away with those to save money. Good for them but unfortunately that means we have to sit through a spy movie starring Halle Berry and Mark Wahlberg, two leads with so little chemistry that even when they share the same screen it feels as if they are in different rooms.
The worst part is that they are supposed to be childhood sweethearts. I barely believed they talked to each other after the cameras were done rolling, much less than they ever dated or grew up together. Don’t even get me started about how The Union is another movie where the two romantic leads NEVER KISS.
I don’t know whether it’s the sex-shy generation, the still idiotic taboo of interracial kissing, or just plain laziness. But whatever it is, I hate it.
Farino and his screenwriters Joe Barton and David Guggienheim, toil tirelessly to ensure nothing interesting, romantic, or amusing happens. Though I’m sure a couple of lines were meant to be jokes I never found any of them funny. Like the bit about Wahlberg’s Mike sleeping with his former seventh-grade English teacher. Hysterical. Dana Delany is a great actress she’s wasted on a joke that starts to go somewhere but then stops.
The irritating thing is that on paper The Union isn’t a half-bad idea. Barton and Guggenheim attempt to eschew the spy genre by re-jiggering the archetypes. Instead of international men and women of mystery, you have the working-class characters of common sense. Instead of the FBI, you have The Union, a top-secret shadowy government organization filled with former blue-collar, salt-of-the-earth types.
Yet, the script is so dumb that it has Whalberg be from Jersey only to go undercover as a guy from Boston. I’m not a sociologist but Boston is every bit as working class as Jersey, to say nothing of the fact that Whalberg’s New England accent doesn’t change regardless of where his character’s from. I guess it could be a joke but the film is never smart enough to do anything with it.
The Union is run by Tom Brennan (J.K. Simmons) a taciturn no-nonsense man who runs his organization like a well-oiled construction site. Simmons is great, but he’s doing little more than riffing on the same kind of character he’s played in movies like Patriots Day. Only this time he wears a Detroit Tigers hat, which frankly gives him more personality than almost any other character in The Union.
Berry’s Rox is the James Bond of The Union. Like Simmons Berry gets in and out unscathed. She’s not phoning it in but only because neither Farino nor the script is giving her a number to call. In other words, she’s doing the best she can with the least I’ve ever seen her work with and I’ve seen the X-Men movies.
Ironically the two characters who did have chemistry were Berry and Mike Colter as Nick Faraday. He plays her ex and compared to Wahlberg, Berry and Colton almost melt the screen. Truthfully I would have loved a version of The Union with Colton and Wahlberg’s roles reversed.
But sadly, we must return to the movie I saw and not the one I wish it was. Farion and the script never really fully commit to the premise of The Union. No sooner is Wahlberg’s Mike recruited, does The Union leave behind the streets of Jersey for the poshness of London.
The script leans hard into the idea with members introducing themselves by saying they are from “Local 15-12”. Jackie Earle Haley plays a character called The Foreman, the Q of The Union. He’s called that because he used to be a foreman. The only person who feels at all like a real human is Lorraine Bracco as Mike’s mom.
The vibe for The Union never fits the film we’re watching. Farion plays Springsteen and hopes that it shores up the film’s blue-collar bonafides. Neither does playing Charli XCX make the film hip and exciting. The songs chosen for The Union feel like a playlist rather than a soundtrack.
Again and again, Barton and Guggenheim’s script behaves like it’s valorizing the working class. The Union is regarded as the elite of the elite, the ones who sweep in and clean up the mess left by the other alphabet agencies. But Farion’s aesthetic is glossy and lit like a made-for-Disney movie with adults. There is not a character in this movie who feels like they have ever worked a day in their life.
The Union never really plays with the inherent class divide they set up. The CIA is framed as cocky frat bros but that’s about it. Plus they’re barely in the movie. If anyone in this film had given even the slightest thought to what they were doing, The Union could have been a breath of fresh air. Instead, it’s a Hollywood tripe using progressive Tumblr buzzwords and not understanding what any of it means.
It would be a lie to say I didn’t laugh though. The scene where Alice Lee’s Athena the Union’s doctor gave Wahlberg’s Mike a psych eval made me laugh. Mainly because she slapped him a couple of times and it felt like a nice slice of karmic retribution.
The action scenes, in a better movie, might have been exciting. There’s a car chase at the end involving luxury sports cars tearing across the Italian coast which comes pretty damn close. Alan Stewart’s camera, which lights and frames The Union like a grown-up made-for-Disney movie, almost wrests some genuine tension out of the chase. Farion and Stewart keep the pace light and using Pia Di Ciaula’s editing cobble together something vaguely entertaining.
If I were to sit here and list everything wrong with The Union I would never stop writing. It never reaches the dizzying heights of an anti-masterpiece. To do that it would have to feel as it if were carved out of something, from somewhere or someone, as opposed to what it feels like, assembly line slop.
The Union is an hour and forty-five minutes of competent professionals coming together to earn a paycheck. I’ve been doing this for over a decade and I can say, these types of movies are the worst to sit through. They wear your patience and your soul thin.
Images courtesy of Netflix
Have strong thoughts about this piece you need to share? Or maybe there’s something else on your mind you’re wanting to talk about with fellow Fandomentals? Head on over to our Community server to join in the conversation!
