The Union (2024)
Directed by Julian Farino
No — The Union is not woke, scoring 12 out of 100 on our wokeness meter.
The Union arrives as a Netflix espionage comedy with the confidence of a catered corporate retreat.
Consciousness Markers
Halle Berry headlines opposite Wahlberg, with Mike Colter, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, and Alice Lee rounding out a notably multiracial ensemble, though the film never remarks on any of it.
Berry's Roxanne is a highly competent veteran agent who outclasses the recruited everyman, but the arc ultimately resolves into a conventional romantic reunion rather than any thesis about gender.
The villain's stated grievance is that The Union never gave him proper credit or adequate reimbursement, a faint whiff of workplace resentment rather than any structural critique.
No LGBTQ+ characters, themes, or subtext of any kind appear in the film.
The interracial romance and diverse cast are presented without a single line of commentary on race, history, or systemic anything.
No environmental themes whatsoever; the only pollution of note was the on-set noise complaints in Fitzrovia.
No body-positivity themes; the film's physical ideal is the standard action-spy physique.
No neurodivergent characters or themes are present.
A wholly fictional spy caper with no historical claims to revise.
The film is a breezy Netflix espionage comedy that never pauses to instruct the audience on anything.
Why it received this score
The Union arrives as a Netflix espionage comedy with the confidence of a catered corporate retreat. Mark Wahlberg plays Mike McKenna, a Paterson construction worker. His high school sweetheart, Roxanne Hall, played by Halle Berry, recruits him into a covert outfit that apparently has no HR department and a generous travel budget. The cast is notably multiracial, with Mike Colter, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, and Alice Lee in support. The film treats this fact as ordinary, which is to its credit and also the limit of its cultural ambition. Nobody remarks on race. Nobody needs to. The movie has other appointments to keep, mostly involving briefcases and car chases.
Berry's Roxanne is the competent veteran who outclasses the recruited everyman at every turn. That is a pleasant inversion of the usual spy-comedy arithmetic, though the story eventually files her back into a romantic reunion with Mike. The result is a mild feminist current, not a thesis. The villain, Nick Faraday, nurses a grievance about credit and reimbursement from The Union, which gives the film a faint whiff of workplace resentment. It is not a structural critique of capital. It is a complaint about a bonus structure, delivered by a man who has chosen international espionage as his escalation path.
Elsewhere the ledger is quiet. No LGBTQ characters or themes appear. No climate concerns intrude, unless we count the Fitzrovia noise complaints during production. No body-positivity message, no neurodivergent characters, no historical revision, no sermonizing. The Union is a breezy, disposable caper that wants to entertain and then leave the room. It does not lecture. It does not even raise its voice. The film's social consciousness is mostly a matter of casting a diverse ensemble and letting them handle the plot without commentary. That is a modest achievement, and the movie seems content to stop there.
Thematic tags: []
Note: The thematic_tags field is included as an empty list because none of the specified categories apply to The Union.
Analysis generated by our Consciousness Algorithm
Synopsis
A New Jersey construction worker goes from regular guy to aspiring spy when his long-lost high school sweetheart recruits him for an espionage mission.
Questions about The Union
Is The Union woke?
No — The Union is not woke, scoring 12 out of 100 on our wokeness meter. That earns it a verdict of Ultra Based.
Does The Union have any woke elements?
1 of the 10 markers register at 30 or above, led by Representation Casting (35). On Representation Casting: Halle Berry headlines opposite Wahlberg, with Mike Colter, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, and Alice Lee rounding out a notably multiracial ensemble, though the film never remarks on any of it.
How does The Union compare to other 2024 movies?
It ranks #120 of the 189 films from 2024 we've scored; their average is 22. The wokest is The Six Triple Eight (92).
How is the Woke Score calculated?
An AI-assisted process researches the film and its reception, scores it 0–100 on ten markers, then combines those into one 0–100 Woke Score. It measures a specific set of 2020s cultural themes, not film quality.