Mark Wahlberg and Halle Berry's 'The Union' delivers a capable action-comedy without requiring overtime

Halle Berry is slick as a secret agent guiding Mark Wahlberg into the spy life in this dumb-but-agreeable caper

If I were an international super spy, I'd send a complaint. In The Union, a fun-but-forgettable new streaming option on Netflix, Mark Wahlberg is a blue-collar schmoe from Jersey who turns full-bore Jason Bourne after just two weeks of training. Yes, the central gimmick of this movie (which is clever) hinges on how the agents and assassins who do the real work are the working-class stiffs who aren't plucked from the Ivy League. Still, all those parkour moves, mixed martial arts stunts, and marksmanship skills laying dormant in a dude who drinks domestic beer while listening to "What I Like About You" on a bar jukebox feels a little far-fetched.

With that idiotic gripe out of the way, hats off to The Union, which, compared to some other direct-to-Netflix action-comedy movies featuring big stars (e.g., The Gray Man, Red Notice, Project Power and, dare-I-say-it, Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F), isn't all that bad. Wahlberg's Mikey McKenna is a lovable loser living with his mother (Lorraine Bracco) in Paterson, N.J., shacking up with his old 7th-grade English teacher (Dana Delany) and buying rounds he can't afford for his bros. He works some kind of construction gig that has him walking out on beams over the Pulaski Skyway as Springsteen's "Promised Land" plays on the soundtrack. He's what makes America great.

Related: Mark Wahlberg praises Halle Berry's action chops in The Union: ‘She is in incredible shape’

But he's hollow inside ever since his high school sweetie Roxanne Hall (Halle Berry) skipped out on him. She went away to college, but what he doesn't know is that the perfectly coiffed Roxanne is actually a member of an elite black ops team for a secret intelligence group called the Union.

What's the Union, you ask? Well, there's the CIA, but picture those guys like the rich snobs in Caddyshack. The Union is made up of men and women who work real jobs — electricians, steel fitters, sandhogs, stevedores — and their street smarts are what's actually keeping the world (relatively) safe from bad guys. This comes into clever play during some of the movie's action sequences, in which Union members open hidden-in-plain-sight fuse boxes and infrastructure hatches to find stashed weapons or escape routes. Think of it as the inverse of the Kingsman premise, trading those bespoke suits for blue jeans.

Want more movie news? Sign up for Entertainment Weekly's free newsletter to get the latest trailers, celebrity interviews, film reviews, and more.

The movie begins in Trieste, Italy, where an extraction goes south. A briefcase filled with a master list of all known spies (pretty much the same hard drive from the first Mission: Impossible movie) is now in treacherous hands and will soon be auctioned off to whichever enemy of truth, justice, and the American way has the most dough. The Union needs to send in a total unknown that the auctioneers can't trace to help get the material back, and Roxanne believes her old flame is the perfect guy.

She shows up at Mikey's local tavern in an outfit pretty close to her X-Men costume, makes him think he's about to get a second chance at love, but drugs him and flies him to London. (The Union is based in London — probably so the movie's production could evade Hollywood union labor. Ironic!) Even though Mikey's best pal is about to get married, he joins the team, which is led by J.K. Simmons and includes Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje as the muscle, Alice Lee as the driver/medic, and Jackie Earle Haley as the hacker. They then zoom around London to find computer chips and whatnot, and the action eventually heads to Istria, a little slice of paradise on the Adriatic under the Slovenian flag.

Related: Halle Berry says she's broken 10 bones and 'been knocked out 3 times' filming action movies

With a plot this rote, a movie like this lives or dies on the chemistry of its cast, and The Union scores well in that department. Berry is terrific as the straight man to Wahlberg's doofus, and it's good to be reminded just how badass she can be. This is very much an action-comedy, but when she is mowing down nameless assassins and working complex fighting moves, the thrills are pretty genuine. Wahlberg's character see-saws between running and jumping Tom Cruise type and being a "did I just do that?" novice. At times, I was reminded of Adam Sandler romping around the Eiffel Tower in Murder Mystery 2, to put this in Netflix terms. Still, it all basically works, and J.K. Simmons is also always welcome as a no-nonsense boss. The tone of the whole endeavor is similar to Netflix's Schwarzenegger-led series FUBAR, which is currently shooting its second season. Maybe there's a crossover in the future.

The Union was directed by Julian Farino, whose previous work has mainly been on television series like Entourage, Ballers, and, a little unexpectedly, In Treatment. I would describe his auteurial imprint as one that "gets out of the way." All of the action is shot cleanly, and I could always tell where everyone was in relation to one another during the setpieces — which may not sound like much of a win, but if you think that, you clearly haven't watched too many direct-to-streaming movies. If you want something done efficiently, hire a union man. Grade: B

Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly.