Mark Wahlberg remains a questionable action star. His nightmarish past aside, the star of Shooter and Father Stu earned his fair share of hate for the Transformers movies. The current phase of his career sees him rarely appear in anything he didn’t also produce. This strategy is probably great for his bottom line, but it’s unlikely to create anything as sharp as Boogie Nights. The Family Plan demonstrates the grim reality of Wahlberg’s current era by stitching dad movies together into a generic mess.
The Family Plan Sees Mark Wahlberg Carry Another Action Comedy to Streaming Success
Mark Wahlberg wants to establish two things in every production he puts out. He can still do athletic action stuff, and he’s a dedicated caretaker and father. It’s the usual routine for an action star of his era. He maintained the powers of his youth and developed all the adult man skills expected of his station. That’s the underlying message of every film he appears in. The Family Plan stretches those two concepts across 119 minutes. Mark Wahlberg plays Dan Morgan, a former contract killer for the US government and current suburban dad. He lives a quiet life as a car salesman with his lovely wife and three kids. A wayward selfie, fulfilling the usual meaningless fist-shaking about technology, exposes his whereabouts to his former employer. The Morgan family goes on the run as Dan plans new identities. The escalation from generic family stuff to brutal action is almost hilarious.
Mark Wahlberg’s strength as an action star rests heavily on his intensity. The same virtue allows him to deliver fun comedic performances in films like The Other Guys. The Family Plan asks him to play another professional killer, essentially his default state. It also asks him to pick up Chevy Chase’s landmark role as Clark Griswold in National Lampoon’s Vacation. It’s James Cameron’s True Lies without the cleverness. The Family Plan refuses to support the absurdity nor lean into the juxtaposition that animates its central premise. We’ve seen this story told a hundred different ways in wildly varying tones. This is one of the most predictable, bland, and safe experiences anyone could have with an action film. Those failures barely matter on Apple TV, where a famous face guarantees some attention. The film sits behind Ridley Scott’s Napoleon and Matthew Vaughn’s Argylle in the service’s top ten.
The Family Plan is destined to lose the attention of families with very little in common. It’s loud enough to fill time in an otherwise silent living room. Mark Wahlberg’s other collaboration with director Simon Cellan Jones, Arthur the King, is a massive improvement, though it still struggles. Anyone looking for another Mark Wahlberg action film has better options, but this isn’t the worst. Anyone looking for Valkyrae’s major motion picture debut is in the right place, though.
