'The Union' review: Mark Wahlberg, Halle Berry in dumb spy flick

WHAT IT'S ABOUT "The Union" arrives on Netflix straight off the action movie assembly line. Stop us if this sounds familiar: a special, super-secret spy agency — one that operates in the shadows and away from the official channels — targets a stolen list of compromising data about all sorts of intelligence assets.

In this case, the agency is called "the Union," and it's filled with "blue collar, not blue blood" types, as its director Tom Brennan (J.K. Simmons) puts it.

So when the unit needs some fresh talent after a busted operation, top agent Roxanne Hall (Halle Berry) goes where she must: back home to Paterson, New Jersey, to recruit her former flame Mike McKenna (Mark Wahlberg).

Of course, Mike has not a single applicable skill: he's a construction worker, with no experience in the world of espionage, and he lives with his mom Lorraine (Long Island's own Lorraine Bracco).

Also, recruitment actually means Roxanne tranquilizing him while they slow dance to Bruce Springsteen's wonderful "Jersey Girl" cover, and then ferrying him off to London while he's asleep. But we digress.

The director Julian Farino comes with credits including many episodes of "Entourage," which Wahlberg executive produced.

MY SAY If you were running a spy agency and an emergency happened, one that left the future of the global security apparatus hanging in the balance, would Mike really be your first stop for a new recruit? Not in a million years, even if you used to date him. There's no way to justify this and no scenario in which it makes sense.

You can't make it better, either, by throwing in a bunch of Jersey jokes and references. There's Wahlberg calling himself "Jersey James Bond," or bragging about how he can easily race a car around a track at a gazillion miles an hour because he has experience at go-carts in the Garden State. It's not as funny or as charming as the movie believes it to be.

So "The Union" defies logic to such an extent that no amount of suspension of disbelief could ever justify it. It packs on a bunch of half-baked quips.

What's left?

Well, there's Wahlberg and Berry doing the same-old "buddy cop" thing, dashing all about Europe, fighting off generic and faceless bad guys and creating absolutely zero feeling while reminiscing about their lives together in that wonderful paradise called New Jersey.

There are action scenes without any style or visual perspective, edited into oblivion, lacking a single interesting stunt or other set piece. They could be transposed into almost any other movie on the Netflix action page and wouldn't seem out of place.

The bar for success in this genre does not need to be terribly high. Every movie doesn't need to be "The Fugitive" or "Die Hard." Audiences want to see movies like "The Union." They want to like them. But, at a minimum, you've got to give them some sense that someone out there's trying. And there's none of that here.

BOTTOM LINE Other than the two Springsteen songs on the soundtrack — the other one being "The Promised Land" — there's not much to recommend.