I’m back this week for some more mindless movie fun. The weather has been hot, so it’s a great time to stay in and watch some new streaming releases. This week’s selections are “The Union” and “Jackpot”, so join me and read my thoughts about this pair of films. But be warned as there will be spoilers up ahead, so if you haven’t seen one or the other, feel free to skip around or come here to check out some of my other reviews or movie marathons.
The Union
Alright, up first is the new Netflix original movie, “The Union” by Director Julian Farino. It stars Halle Berry as Roxanne Hall and Mark Wahlberg as Mike McKenna. This is a formula that we’ve seen quite a few times. An organization (The Union) has a job go wrong, so they use someone on the inside (Berry) to recruit someone on the outside (Wahlberg) because no one will know who they are.
This one was no different, except I really liked the supporting cast here. J.K. Simmons (who is great in everything he does), Mike Colter, Jackie Earle Haley, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, and Alice Lee. It was a fun team and they had so much going for them to make it a great movie.
When Roxanne shows up in Mike’s hometown, she starts to bring back some serious memories in his mind. They used to date in high school, so he is thrilled to see her, but then she injects him with something to knock him out. When he wakes up, he is in London and rightfully pissed about the whole situation.
Eventually, he decides to stay and accepts the mission and after a two-week training session, he is ready for action in the field and apparently even though he is a construction worker, he is amazing at shooting a gun and several other things. Throughout the film, he and Roxanne go on and off with their attraction for each other, and by the time the story concludes, we get the happy ending of them ending up together plus Mike supposedly being a full-time agent in The Union.
This was by no means a bad movie, but I do feel like they squandered a good story and a good cast with some terrible choices throughout. Mike flying into the trunk? The FBI I thought was going to play a bigger role basically did nothing by the end. Also, I know it’s a movie and certain things have to happen, but I do get tired of seeing so many off-the-wall chances miraculously happen in these action movies just to move the story forward.
Overall, it was a fun ride, but several other films have done it better. I will give this one a very gracious 6 out of 10 just for the supporting cast that helped carry it.
Jackpot
Our second film this week is “Jackpot” which is on Amazon Prime. “Jackpot” is the latest movie from Director Paul Feig. This one stars Awkwafina as Katie Kim and John Cena as Noel. When this starts, right off the bat we get a brief history of where we are at, but not much about how we got here. We only know that there is a Grand Lottery and whoever wins it has until nightfall to stay alive. If someone kills them, then that person would be the big winner.
So we jump right into the action with Katie coming back to Hollywood. After a successful career as a child star, she wants to try to kickstart her life again by auditioning for a movie role. With her mom being gone now, she rolls into town with almost nothing. After a terrible stay at an Airbnb, she accidentally signs up for the lottery when borrowing some clothes and has no clue when she wins it. Noel comes in at just the right time for the save and the two start on a whirlwind adventure while they are looking for ways to keep her alive.
She has some trust issues but learns to overcome those in order to work alongside Noel. He is true to his word and does everything in his power to keep her from dying. Even when they contact Louis Lewis (Simu Liu) as a professional, that backfires as they are constantly looking for a way out.
Once again, this could have been great. It had plenty of funny moments that made me laugh, but in the end, too much of it just didn’t make sense. I normally get a kick (no pun intended) out of Awkwafina’s quips, but they started to run thin this time around. Especially when she was somehow surviving every single attack on her life. She was able to fight off hoards of people with seemingly no training in real fighting.
Honestly, the opening sequence with Seann Willaim Scott might have been my favorite scene of the whole movie. I had a few laughs and the characters had some fun interactions, but there was just too much going against this to give it any higher a score of 5 out of 10!
So, there you have it for another streaming mindless movie marathon. Have you seen either of these movies yet? Were you as let down as I was? Please let me know your thoughts on either of these in the comments.
As always feel free to check out my other reviews here and join me next week for another mindless movie review of some sort.
