Critics reviews

This is another of those bland, superficially lavish thrillers that Netflix pumps out at the end of summer for those too dehydrated to reach the pause button... The only distinguishing feature of this exhilaratingly bad film is its apparent close association with London’s tourism authorities.

There is lots to enjoy in this profoundly silly action dramedy... Wahlberg and Berry demonstrate some easygoing chemistry throughout. They won’t win any Oscars, but the film is vastly superior to Ghosted, last year’s structurally identical AppleTV+ effort with Chris Evans and Ana de Armas.

“The Union” hits bullet points on its outline with an overwhelming sense of tired obligation and stunted creativity. Its leads have no chemistry and being that their will-they-won’t-they serves as the story’s main attempt at depth, the emotive capabilities of the film sputter and shut down.

For the vast majority of its 1 hour, 47-minute runtime, The Union keeps up a pleasurable rhythm of information, mission, combat and flirting, through increasingly eye-rolling plot turns and a car chase in Croatia that seems to last for ever.

[The Union] should have been more fun. Or more exciting. It certainly had a lot working in its favor, including big stars and a budget for globetrotting. But it’s lacking a certain charm that could help it be something more than the Netflix movie playing in the background.

This contrived, pointless, blindingly boring vehicle is a pathetic, desperate attempt to keep Halle Berry and Mark Wahlberg’s careers alive... It’s not surprising for an action picture to be this humorless, but how can any film be so noisy, deadly and boring at the same time?

Here is another made-for-streaming film that you will forget about almost before you’ve even finished watching. It’s just aggressively fine: not terrible, per se, but also not what you could comfortably label good... Deeply forgettable and disposable, this is the kind of action-comedy you will feel like you have seen before.

Despite the actors’ talents, there’s not much depth to their onscreen relationship or their connection with the other team. With no sense of camaraderie uniting The Union, the comedic and more dramatic moments fall flat.

The movie lacks flash or even competence at every turn... How did all of this happen – or, really, fail to happen? The movie seems to pre-suppose that in our desperation to spend time with Wahlberg and Berry, any empty stupid simulacra will suffice as an excuse.

Even if the film‘s ridiculous premise is at least chuckle-inducing... its convoluted MacGuffin and predictable twists ensure that no amount of expensive action sequences from director Julian Farino or genuine chemistry between Wahlberg and Berry can elevate “The Union” into something worth watching.

There’s nothing really to recommend “The Union” except the fact that it exists and you can watch it. It’s a harmless waste of time because it’s a serious waste of a good idea.

The movie’s big idea is to shoehorn a working-class dude into a by-the-numbers action movie, and the excuse barely holds water... The trouble with “The Union” is that neither the film nor its characters have much in the way of personality, to the point it’s not even clear how they feel about one another.