I want to like Mark Wahlberg films more.  To be fair to him, he has been in some decent productions.  No matter the amount of questionable material in The Departed (2006), it is still a quality movie with solid performances, Wahlberg included.  Since then, the charitable assessment of his work would be mixed at best.  I do not like being critical of him because he is a fellow Catholic who does much for the Faith.  Like many of my fellow Romanists, I have downloaded the Hallow App and use it every day.  Because of my familiarity with it, I know that he can be found in many of its offerings, especially during Advent and Lent.  This is what gets me to choose something like The Union (2024), even when I suspect that it will be as generic as anything else he has done of late.  You will have to read on in order to discover whether my assumption was right.

There is little to discover about the beginning of The Union.  This is because the title refers to a spy agency working for the United States government, I guess.  It is cleared up a little later that the reason for the strange name is because they are set up and behave like common workers in order to blend in to society more seamlessly.  This is what is said, but for now their agents look pretty conspicuous as they attempt to extract a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officer in possession of “intelligence” from a hotel in Italy.  What this person has, which is another subsequent revelation, is information on all of every country’s clandestine operatives, as well as regular police personnel.  To prevent this falling into the wrong hands, the CIA has hired the eponymous group.  Overseeing the operation is Tom Brenan (J. K. Simmons), who is the boss of Roxanne “Rox” Hall (Halle Berry).  They all have appropriate laborer positions, by the way.  Rox’s job is to oversee those doing the hard work, but they all get picked off one-by-one before the briefcase is scooped up by a shadowy figure in a car, who speeds away with the prize.  We then shift to New Jersey, where we meet Mike McKenna (Mark Wahlberg).  He is waking up in the bed of his seventh grade teacher, so yeah, not the most Catholic of starts.  He still lives in the same town in which he grew up, still with his mother (Lorraine Bracco), and still hanging out with the same group of friends.  That night as he is regaling them with tales of his exploits with his former teacher when another old acquaintance walks back into his life: Rox.  Actually, in high school, they had been more than acquaintances, having dated and gone to prom together.  Their relationship fizzled when she went off to college, but she is keen to rekindled some of their old feelings.  He believes it is because she has romance on her mind, but as they are about to make out at their favorite spot, she jabs a needle in his neck.  The next time Mike wakes up is in a hotel room in London, England.  He is not prepared to be on another continent and refuses to believe what is happening until Rox, then Tom, appear to explain the backstory I have already provided.  They show Mike their hidden facility and introduce him to the rest of the team.  Eventually, he asks the obvious question: why?  The people who stole the intelligence are setting up an auction for the goods, and The Union wants somebody who can look like them, but is unknown in the espionage world.  Given his working class job in the United States and his former athletic prowess, Rox is convinced that Mike is the right person.  He is given the option to walk away, but being around his ex-girlfriend has him feeling like he can make a difference.  As such, he is provided a two-week crash course on being an agent before he is sent to the rendezvous with $5 million to retrieve the device, a cell phone, which they need to participate in the bidding.  Because this is an action flick, with spies thrown in for good measure, the endeavor does not go smoothly.  Armed goons show up to try and steal the target, and in the chaos the mobile falls into water and is rendered useless.  Upon returning to base, they reason that there is a mole in their organization, while also concluding that there will be others entering the auction.  Hence, they figure out where those others might be, in this case Russians, and steal their device.  With it, Tom and the Foreman (Jackie Earle Haley) are able to triangulate the location of the mysterious auctioneer, Juliet Quinn (Jessica De Gouw).  Mike and Rox are about to obtain the intelligence from her when there is a knock at the door.  It is Nick Faraday (Mike Colter), another Union agent, and one who had seemingly died in Italy.  He comes forward talking about a leak in the agency, and telling Rox to meet him the next day so that he can prove himself.  Mike is suspicious, but Rox trusts Nick because they have been married, though recently separated.  Mike thinks his job is over until he calls his friends in New Jersey and sees that they are getting along fine without him.  As such, he returns to Rox in time to see Nick’s betrayal, who has told the CIA that they are the traitors.  Instead, Mike and Rox get away and are able to track Nick to Istria in Croatia.  There is more driving, running, and shooting, the long and short of which is that the title people are exonerated.  We conclude with Mike and Rox back in New Jersey attending the wedding of one of their classmates.

Maybe the concept of former high school sweethearts turning into spies as in The Union is unique on its own.  I mean, every story has something that at least somewhat differentiates it from others.  It is the way in which this one is told that had me feeling like I have seen this all before in other films.  Indeed, I did not take many notes, and the total word count for them is a paltry eight.  One line I did jot down is “second chances.”  It is about as close to a theme as one is going to get here, but it is a Catholic one.  In many respects, our Savior is the God of second chances.  The Bible is full of people getting extra opportunities to make things right, in both testaments.  One could simply point to Exodus without needing to reference any other Scripture, but God’s patience is on display before and after He draws the Israelites out of Egyptian slavery.  This all sounds a bit more highfalutin than the movie deserves, but let us try to see where this applies to Mike’s life.  Life is a gift, but this is not how he has been treating it.  He had been further been gifted with athletic ability and a good girlfriend, but he let it all lapse.  However, God has seen it fit to provide him with a do over, with the former of those assets being used to be become a spy.  To be clear, there is no kind of divine intervention attributed to these developments in his life.  Nonetheless, when they come along, they can show us how God is at work in our lives.  That is a far better exercise than watching anything in this film.

I should not say that The Union is a bad movie.  It just suffers from a lack of originality, even if some of the particulars are unlike other spy flicks.  In short, this is one you have seen in other contexts.