The trailer for upcoming Netflix action film The Union, led by Mark Wahlberg and Halle Berry, has arrived. Watch it above.
The film has Wahlberg playing Mike, a New Jersey construction worker whose quiet life takes quite the turn until his high school sweetheart, Roxanne (Berry), reappears with a proposition beyond rekindling romance. She enlists Mike for a perilous intelligence mission in Europe, plunging them into a world of espionage and high-speed chases, where sparks fly once more.
Director here is Julian Farino, whose credits include a solid amount of television work, including Brooklyn Nine-Nine, The Newsroom, Rome, and the Wahlberg-produced Entourage. The screenplay was written by Joe Barton (The Ritual) and David Guggenheim.
Looks like a lightweight, potentially enjoyable film – one that will no doubt rely on the chemistry of the two leads to carry us between action set pieces. Farino told Netflix site Tudum that he wanted to place a focus on the protagonists’ relationship amidst the action: “Roxanne and Mike’s relationship is going to define the movie. Even the action was always about keeping our characters integral to the explosions and fun and games.”
Said Wahlberg, one of the film’s producers: “We always felt Roxanne had to be the love of this guy’s life; he stayed where he was because he was hoping that she would actually come back into his life somehow. They had a sort of forbidden high school relationship, and he’d do anything to make her smile and anything to make her happy and to never let her out of his sight again. That’s his entire motivation –– her smile.”
The Union, also starring Mike Colter, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Jessica De Gouw, Alice Lee, Jackie Earle Haley, and J.K. Simmons, premieres on Netflix on August 16.
