It is frustrating for me that my dislike of Mark Wahlberg appears to be in inverse proportion to how often I watch his features. Whatever you think of him, or of his acting skills, he often ends up in entertainment that appeals to those after some silly and fun distraction.
The Family Plan is interchangeable with a whole heap of other movies we have seen in recent years about family men forced to confront a past in which they were super-skilled and deadly. Wahlberg is that man, of course, and he has a whole family unit (his wife, Michelle Monaghan, two teens, Zoe Colletti and Van Crosby, and a baby) completely unaware of his dangerous history. Can Wahlberg keep his family in the dark as various people start trying to kill them while they head off on an unexpected road trip?
Writer David Coggeshall knows what he needs to do here, and he does it. This is a take action comedy, but it’s equally a star vehicle for Wahlberg. If you think that Wahlberg isn’t going to emerge victorious then you haven’t seen any other Wahlberg movies recently. While there aren’t any truly memorable exchanges, nor any surprises in the plotting, the screenplay sets everything up and moves along quickly enough to stop viewers from asking too many questions.
Director Simon Cellan Jones has, as of today, made his most recent three films with Wahlberg in the lead role, which would make him appear to have been favoured by the one-time head of the Funky Bunch. He shows an affinity for the decidedly average, ensuring that everything here will be forgotten mere days after you have watched it. And I speak from experience, having already watched the sequel (stay tuned, review pending) while constantly confusing this with Back In Action.
Wahlberg is as Wahlberg is. I am not sure anyone would consider themselves a big fan of the star nowadays, aside from maybe his immediate family, but he at least feels like a decent casting choice here. Monaghan is unsurprisingly left with a bit less to do, but she is still able to have fun in a few scenes that allow her to actively participate. Colletti and Crosby are both okay, Maggie Q plays a character unable to surprise viewers due to the fact that she is played by Maggie Q, and Ciaran Hinds is effectively heavy-handed and gruffly menacing as the villain with a very strong motivation for getting his best employee back.
I can’t deny that I had some fun with this, and a couple of the action beats were more fun than any of the attempts at comedy. I won’t ever rewatch it though, and it is just one more piece of Mark Wahlberg “streaming content” to put in the big pile that already includes the likes of Spenser Confidential, Arthur The King, and Play Dirty, to name just the first lot that sprung to mind.
6/10
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