The Union is on the shortlist for best Netflix Algorithm screenplay. It’s got all the beats of something you can pay attention to when it gets louder, or looks prettier. But when the plot is explaining itself? Phone or chores time! I know Mark Wahlberg has been basically working his way to this moment, but how did Halle Berry get sucked into mediocre streamer hell? I blame Catwoman from 20 years ago, I guess.
After a compromised mission in Trieste leaves her compromised and without a team, Roxanne Hall (Halle Berry) convinces her boss Tom Brennan (JK Simmons) to recruit her high school sweetheart Mike McKenna (Mark Wahlberg) to join The Union: an international spy organization made up of salt of the earth working class heroes. What’s Mike up to these days. Shockingly, being a working class hero in New Jersey, occasionally sleeping with his hot 7th Grade English Teacher Nicole (Dana Delaney) and hearing about it from his mom (Lorraine Bracco). Mike’s blank slate makes him a moldable hero in training, as Roxanne convinces him to jump into the espionage game to help uncompromise the Union from power broker Juliet Quinn (Jessica De Gouw) and the eager enemies of the US wanting this intel very, very badly.
I’m gonna guess the prompt and the pitch from Ted Sarandos and the AI Generators response: The pitch: “Write me an action comedy movie pitch that’s under 2 hours with 2 affordable movie stars as heroes, 2 TV stars as villains, featuring at least 3 European cities that are underrated to visit in the summer.” I understand now! The Union is actually about the union of Sarandos’s work and business life, as he probably “consulted” on the movie while it was filming for an hour or so, before galavanting across the European continent. And what was the AI prompt back? Probably this “Mark Wahlberg and Halle Berry are high school sweethearts. She’s moved on and become an elite assassin, but he still pines for her. Berry and her ethnically diverse support team will cover all of our streaming demo and help her in the movie. Let’s reverse the race of the TV stars and have Mike Colter be one of the other assassins, and Jessica de Gouw be some sort of rich middlewoman. We can have them spend some time on the Gulf of Trieste in Italy and Slovenia, and a little bit of London to grab a beer. And, for contrast, the crappy parts of New Jersey and license a Springsteen song. Sound good Ted?” From there, Netflix hired a bunch of guns for hire directors and such to shoot this as quickly and efficiently as possible, so the Netflix execs could easily enjoy their little vacay.
And yet, I can’t help but enjoy The Union in spite of it’s blatant genericism. That’s because the movie is clearly shot on location. I got so used to CGI green screens that I simply forgot that places as beautiful as Piran Slovenia exist, and you can actually shoot incredible stuff in the real world instead of just on a stage. The final chase is all along the water in Piran, and despite the car chase being way too long, it’s shot so epically as a part of a killer landscape that you can’t help but smile and start planting travel ideas in your head. Hell even some of the Jersey stuff looked enjoyable because it actually was a real place in the real world.
So that’s the new bar for streaming movies like The Union. If you spend a few dollars masquerading your film as a travelogue, you’re gonna keep some viewers eyes and dollars. Who knows? Maybe Netflix’ll start partnering with picturesque towns all over the globe, filming incredible stuff on location, building in sales pitches into the dialogue of Halle Berry, or Millie Bobby Brown, or whichever star the streamer wants to sell their latest joint venture through. AI wrote that sales pitch probably too.