The Union Movie Review: Julian Farino’s new spy thriller has a lot in common with Citadel. Like the Russo Brothers’ Prime Video spy series, it features two spies with rich, romantic pasts. Like that series, they’re on a mission to protect highly classified data containing details about spies around the world. But that’s where the similarities end. At its core, the film, starring Halle Berry and Mark Wahlberg, is a rare spy thriller about the American dream.

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The Spy of the Working Class

Mark Wahlberg plays Mike, a construction worker who proudly represents the humble American dream, building the nation brick by brick and pipe by pipe. One day he gets a visitor – and is then kidnapped by his high school sweetheart Roxanne (Halle Berry), who takes him from New Jersey to London. She turns out to be a spy working for the CIA. Well, not exactly the CIA. She is recruited by the Union, an agency outsourced by the CIA that does the real work. It hires workers who act on intelligence provided by the parent agency and get stuck in on the ground.

Tom (JK Simmons), the union leader, prides himself on his task force being “blue collar” rather than just “blue blood.” But why is Mike recruited for the job? Well, partly because of his clean record. And partly because Roxanne knows he believes he’s capable of so much more. That while he puts on the facade of the average guy quite boastfully, when night falls, he’s also the one sleeping with their high school English teacher to enrich himself. The latent desire to do something bigger, more meaningful, is also embedded in the American dream.

Not only his story

But Mike doesn’t undergo a dramatic transformation where he rises to the occasion and becomes the agency’s top spy. He doesn’t do the heavy lifting here, which is refreshingly logical. But that also makes Mike a boring kid. Mark Wahlberg seems too tough to react to his absurd situation – one day he was eating Subway on a building under construction and the next day he’s a spy in London, hired by his ex-girlfriend! Mark handles this bizarreness with a strange clinical detachment in what could have been a pretty funny situation.

He makes up for it during his training montage. Director Julian Farino treats the sequence not with the intensity of a spy thriller but with the beats of a funny TikTok video. It’s oddly funny to see a tough guy like Mark Wahlberg get beat up by a woman and punched in the face twice. To his credit, Mark remains that sloppy, clumsy spy until the end and doesn’t miraculously save the day. The same can’t be said for his co-star, though. Halle Berry is top-notch as a top-notch action spy, moving like a wily panther and her posture is spot on.

Old wine, new bottles

It’s also heartening to witness her development. Her identity as a black woman is central to her development in many ways – she doesn’t have a boyfriend who stands up to his racist father, she disappears like all spies to escape their trauma, and by taking the lead she proves that the American dream is not just the property of a white man – the black population contributes just as much, or even more, to building the nation when given equal opportunities. At the same time, she also reaches a point where she has to decide what she is first and foremost – an American or a black American.

It’s a surprise that JK Simmons hasn’t been cast as the stereotypical head spy yet. Of course, he fits in perfectly, but he also embodies everything that’s wrong with the film and the oversaturated spy genre in general. A James Bond-like figure barking orders over walkie-talkie, spies hiding in plain sight while filming in broad daylight, exciting but repetitive chases, especially in exotic locations like Croatia, and more that’s impossible to talk about without giving away spoilers. Since this is, once again, old wine in new bottles, a few self-deprecating jokes are a refreshing change. For example, a spy referring to being a rogue as “freelancing.” But these are few and far between. This genre is now in dire need of excessive shaking or stirring.

“The Union” will premiere on Netflix on August 16.