The Union - An Enjoyable Spy Action Comedy Thriller Movie

Like many Fridays before yesterday, there was a new movie released on Netflix which has an interesting premise. This one had plent of well known stars in it which obviously made me intrigued. So last night I immediately watch it as soon as I had the chance. All right, let's just get to it then.

Brief Story Line

Mike McKenna (Mark Wahlberg - The Family Man, Uncharted etc) was a construction worker who had been living in his home town all his life. When his high school girlfriend Roxanne Hall (Halle Berry - John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum, Die Another Day etc) suddenly appeared, he was very delighted. However apparently Roxanne was working for a unit in the CIA called the Union under his boss Tom Brennan (J. K. Simmons - The Tomorrow War, Renegades etc) and she wanted to recruit Mike to join her.

Despite his reluctance and inexperience, Mike agreed to join Roxanne and became the newest agent while trying to uncover the threat that would endanger the whole agency.

So how would the story conclude? You could find out in this film.

End of Brief Story Line

Looking at the premise, this film sounded fun where an inexperienced regular person was recruited to become a spy and had to face all the danger of the espionage world. And combined with a bit of light romance of the lead characters who were high school sweet hearts plus cool action, made this an enjoyable film for me. Yes, the story might seem simple but I thought that was what made the movie perfect for audience looking for such attributes, like me. Which is why I had a pretty good time watching this last night.

The action for me was definitely the highlight as some of them were surprisingly better than expected and it had a rather spectacular climax scene. Even if few times they were a bit over the top, but hey most action movies did them any way. I think the actions were quite seriously crafted and the director Julian Farino did a decent job in making them. It was a wonderful enough feat considering most of his experience was directing series like Coronation Street, Entourage, Ballers and only very few British TV movies. The movie itself was written by Joe Barton (creator of Giri/Haji and The Lazarus Project etc) and David Guggenheim (Safe House, Stolen etc). So their portfolio were quite impressive. 

The film has a pretty large ensemble cast. Mark Wahlberg and Halle Berry were quite convincing in their roles to my opinion, while J. K. Simmons showed his usual style as grumpy man. In addition to them, the support characters included Union agents Frank (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje - Suicide Squad, Lost TV series etc), Athena (Alice Lee - Zoey's Extraordinary Playlist TV series etc), Foreman (Jackie Earle Haley - Alita: Battle Angel, Human Target TV series etc) and Nick Faraday (Mike Colter - Plane, Luke Cage TV series etc). There were also other cast like Lorraine Bracco (The Sopranos TV series etc) as Mike's mother, Jessica De Gouw (Gretel & Hansel, Dracula TV series etc) as the broker Juliet and several in minor capacity. 

For a movie that was classified under action comedy genre, I thought it was rightly categorized. There was indeed a bit of comedy arising from the situation and the action was plenty to entertain us. In fact it did not seem like the B low budget movie type. The setting of lovely London & Istria (even though it was actually shot in Solvenia) was a real joy to see as well. So if you do not mind to see a rather predictable story (yes including the very standard twist) with some quite entertaining action scenes and want to have fun while enjoying the beautiful sceneries, then I think you would enjoy it like I did. As long as you don't expect high calibre spy films like James Bond or Mission: Impossible, then you should be fine.

Mike's movie moments rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars