Laura Radford/Netflix
Say what you will about big movies bypassing the theatrical experience, but this week’s most-watched Netflix titles make one thing clear: star power still matters, even on streaming. Case in point: “The Union,” a new Netflix Original movie starring Halle Berry and Mark Wahlberg that’s been climbing the viewership charts since its release last week, according to streaming chart data site FlixPatrol.
Action rom-com “The Union” is currently beating away the rest of the competition on Netflix’s top 10 most-watched list, which as of publication time is mostly made up of family films like “The Super Mario Bros. Movie,” “Migration,” and “Trolls Band Together.” Kids who demand a dozen rewatches of their animated favorites clearly have nothing on grown-ups who have been itching to see Berry back in action for the first time in a few years, though.
Berry’s only appeared in two other films since 2019’s “John Wick: Chapter 3,” and neither her directorial debut “Bruised” nor the record-breaking Roland Emmerich bomb “Moonfall” made much of a strong impression. While it’s always tough to measure the cultural impact of movies dropped directly onto Netflix, it’s clear that subscribers are showing up to watch Wahlberg and Berry kick some butt in “The Union.” According to Netflix’s own Top 10 website, the movie has already accrued over 33 million views.
“The Union” follows a pair of former high school sweethearts who briefly rekindle their romance, only for everyman Mike (Wahlberg) to realize that his former partner Roxanne (Berry) is now a spy working for an organization known only as The Union. Soon, he ends up recruited into a world of action-packed espionage, where he’s trained to hold his own against bad guys in high-stakes international situations.
The Union is #1 on the Netflix top 10
Netflix
Like the not-good 2023 Apple TV movie “Ghosted” did with Chris Evans, the movie’s plot requires viewers to believe that action star Wahlberg is Just Some Clumsy Guy. At the same time, it follows in the vein of a number of recent films, from “The Fall Guy” to “The Lost City,” by interweaving a romantic plot with its action-comedy shenanigans.
Despite a great cast list that also includes J.K. Simmons, Jackie Earle Haley, and Mike Colter, “The Union” did not win over most critics. Only 38% of critics featured on aggregate site Rotten Tomatoes reviewed the film positively, with many critics noting that the movie falls flat like so many Netflix action flicks that came before it. IGN’s Matt Fowler writes that the movie is “shamefully safe, terribly unclever,” and “unchallenging and rote to the point of being downright hollow,” while Richard Roeper, writing for the Chicago Sun-Times, noted that “moderately entertaining but wildly implausible and utterly predictable and quite dopey” movie must have been an “easy paycheck” gig for the stars.
As usual with the Netflix Top 10, critical consensus matters less than what happens to catch subscribers’ eyes, and this week, it seems that the Wahlberg-Berry team-up did just that. The Julian Farino-directed film has only been out for 5 days, so it’s too early to tell if it’ll become an enduring Netflix hit or fall by the wayside the next time something else hits the streamer (it’s not even in the same category, but I personally suggest “Interview with the Vampire” as your next Netflix binge-watch). You can also watch “The Union,” which is exclusively on Netflix, today.