The Union

A truly awful film and a waste of a talented cast. The plot must have been written by AI. It had every cliched plot point you could imagine; the ordinary man becoming a hero; spy stuff; the beautiful ex-girlfriend; action; a foreign location. It wasn't even funny, just grim.i gritted my teal and slogged through it. I'd like to say that there were some interesting plot points that could have been done better it expanded upon, but that wasn't the case. I appreciate that companies such as Netflix need content to keep their subscribers happy, but the quality needs to be much better, even if it takes longer to produce.

Picturesque locations, good production values, some good actors and Mark Wahlberg, but nothing memorable. Perfect moving wallpaper to glance at occasionally while scrolling on your phone. Essentially it's a string of comfortable cliches strung together in a predictable sequence, designed to make you forget to cancel your Netflix subscription. Halle Berry looks better than ever, JK Simmons doesn't break a sweat using one of his 'grizzled' character templates.

The UK setting is puzzling because apart from the scenery it's almost wall-to-wall Americans doing American things in American ways. The Slovenian locations look beautiful but, again, they have no impact on the plot, which could easily have been generated by ChatGPT with a very short prompt.

Well ... I found myself playing mindless games on my phone half way through, keeping a half an eye on the movie.

First the pros: the action sequences were pretty good. (Sorry, it's a short list) Cons: very little chemistry between the leads, I made the bad guy immediately (and if I did, why didn't the international super-spy?) and it just wasn't even believable enough to allow the suspension of disbelief needed for movies of this genre. One example: I suspect that secret agents do everything they can to blend in, rather than dressing like a cross between catwoman and action Barbie, with eye-catching hair.

Anyways ... not objectionable but with the resources obviously available, just feel like this could have been done way better.

Going into this action/comedy movie, I knew nothing about it and my expectation was extremely low. Maybe too low but I felt this movie started out OK. Things made sense but it went South (way South) very very quickly. Everything was sub-par ranging from action scenes to acting, and it was really getting painful to watch toward the end. There was no climax whatsoever. Thank God I was not watching this in the movie theater!

Unless you have watched everything on Netflix (which I was told simply impossible), please skip this one. You have not missed much and glad that you have followed my advice.

For a Netflix movie it had big screen action and actors and great locations. Very cool to finally see Berry and Wahlberg doing something together - on-screen professionals doing what they do best, make it look so easy and believable which redeems the weak script. You kinda wonder, if they are throwing all this money into big names and big action, why wouldn't they do better with the script and storyline? Script and storyline 3/10, actors, action and locations 8/10. So this gets an overall 6.

Found the scene blowing up the BBC BT Tower in London amusing and interesting (given that I'm a Londoner). What would London actually do if that happened!! Wowzers.