‘The Union’ movie review: Mark Wahlberg, Halle Berry star in serviceable spy comedy

Halle Berry shines in the action-packed film The Union, featuring thrilling missions, high school sweethearts, and a race against time.

Halle Berry’s hair is absolutely brilliant in The Union. All these women-led action movies have delicious hair — remember Charlize Theron in The Old Guard? The Union features Berry as Roxanne, a dangerous, supremely capable super-spy working for a shadowy organisation called, yes you got it, The Union. This is the organisation that quietly does the dirty jobs the other alphabet soup agencies cannot.

When a job goes south in Trieste and a dangerous list is in the wind, Roxanne decides to call... no not Ethan Hunt, (he is busy jumping off planes onto trains or some such) but her high-school sweetheart, Mike (Mark Wahlberg). The two parted ways when Roxanne went to college while Mike stayed in Jersey, as a construction worker, sleeping occasionally with his seventh-grade teacher, Nicole (Dana Delany). His mum keeping tabs on him is a running joke on how well-informed she is.

There are two weeks to Mike’s best friend’s wedding and he has a boatload of best-man duties to perform. And then Roxanne walks into the bar. One moment, Mike is playing ‘Jersey Girl’ to her and the next he wakes up at the super swanky Savoy in London. Gee whiz! Roxanne explains the operation in Trieste, the death of all her team including Faraday (Mike Colter) and the necessity of getting the list back before the world as we know it ends.

Mike has two weeks (the same two that would have been spent writing the best man speech and organising the stag party) to get battle-ready — being a steelworker of the “lunch atop a skyscraper kind” helps somewhat. Mike meets Roxanne’s boss, Tom Brennan (J. K. Simmons), the Union’s equivalent of Q, Foreman, (Jackie Earle Haley), the trainer, Frank (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje) and the comms, Athena (Alice Lee).

There is an auction, (not in a hall with the swish set, but online) a horrid CIA man sneering over everyone’s shoulders, a shady lady called Juliet (Jessica De Gouw), some excellent chases (imagine a scooter defeats two muscle bikes!), gorgeous locations (Istria, here I come), thrilling parkour — from rooftop to window to balcony all bathed in lovely light, and smart one-liners including Brennan calling the CIA the Central Incompetence Agency!

Wahlberg and Berry have an easy chemistry, and their reminiscences of high school and that janitor’s closet as well as the real reason their parents were against the couple make us invest in them. Entourage’s Julian Farino has created the perfect time-pass movie. And that haircut! Sigh.

The Union is currently streaming on Netflix