Life peaked in high school for Mike McKenna ( Mark Wahlberg ), whereas then-sweetheart Roxanne Hall ( Halle Berry ) managed to escape dead-end New Jersey and travel the world. While he joined the local construction workers union, she joined the Union , a clandestine spy group about whom Roxanne blandly claims, “Half the intelligence community don’t know we exist, and the other half regret finding out.” A lazy wish-fulfillment fantasy from Netflix’s star-service department, “The Union” is actually the story of a reunion — Mike and Roxanne’s — set against the backdrop of a crisis we’ve seen one too many times in recent spy movies.
For Wahlberg, the wish in question is wanting to be James Bond, which will never happen for the Dorchester-born American. And the fantasy is getting to play the next best thing, recruited by former Bond girl Halle Berry (sporting her weirdest haircut since “Swordfish,” an anime-style pixie cut, shaved on one side, spiky and blond-tipped on top). 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.
Someone has stolen “information about every man and woman who has ever served a Western allied country” (which sounds a lot like the NOC list plot of the original “Mission: Impossible” movie), and to get it back, the Union needs someone not on that list. They need a nobody, and Roxanne knows just the guy for the job. Mike’s been drinking at the same.