The Family Plan, on Apple TV+

Any former assassin who lets the phony passports in his bug-out bag expire must be slipping. Indeed, Dan Morgan got way too comfortable in his new life as a husband, father, a salesman of “certified pre-owned” cars. Inevitably, his old life comes looking for him in Simon Cellan Jones’s The Family Plan, which premieres today on Apple TV+.

“Dan Morgan,” as he now calls himself, has convinced his wife Jessica that he is safe and boring. Then, somebody tries to kill him while he is shopping for groceries with their little rug rat. Realizing his old boss has found him, Morgan tries to convince his wife, their college-bound daughter Nina, and moody teen gamer son Kyle to leave on a spur-of-the-moment road trip to Las Vegas, where his old crony Augie will hook them up with fresh new identities.

Since he is afraid of how they will react to the truth, Morgan makes a great (and hopefully comedic) effort to shield them from the dangers pursuing them. Of course, his family starts to appreciate Morgan’s new spontaneous side. However, they are not so sure about his new found aversion to smart phones and social media.

Basically, screenwriter David Coggeshall starts with a familiar premise not radically dissimilar from Mr. and Mrs. Smith, True Lies, or various Korean rom-coms like My Girlfriend is an Agent, but he tries to mine it more for family-friendly comedy rather than action-driven thrills. There are a few decent fight sequences, featuring action veterans like Maggie Q, Lateef Crowder, and the star himself, Mark Wahlberg. However, the overall tone feels like it was targeted towards a younger demographic than even the PG-13 rating would suggest.

Mile 22: Peter Berg Directs Iko Uwais

Unfortunately, Congress will probably have to apply the Magnitsky Act to more Russian officials after this explosive kerfuffle. The Russians has compromised the coms of the CIA’s double-secret tactical unit, to feed real-time intel to the terror-supporting security service of a country not completely dissimilar from Indonesia. Their mission is to extract a source who can pin-point large quantities of stolen cesium-137, but it will be a particularly hard day at the office for James Silva’s team in Peter Berg’s Mile 22 (trailer here), which opens today nationwide.

Silva was a child prodigy, who still has trouble with that human relationship kind of stuff. However, he can most definitely shoot, fight, and make command decisions on the fly. We see his team take out a safe-house full of Russian agents in the prologue, with only one fatality on their side, so you know they must be tough. Flashing forward to the rest of the film, we find Silva is now stationed in Indocarr, or some such, where the embassy team faces a bit of a quandary.

Li Noor was a top asset recruited by Silva’s human intel specialist, Alice Kerr. He has a Mission Impossible-protected disk, loaded with the locations of the missing cesium, but it will self-destruct if Li is not safely delivered out of the country. Silva’s team will escort him to the CIA transport plane, but they will have to drive through downtown Not-Jakarta. It should be easy with “Mother” and his fellow “Overwatch” controllers guiding them from an undisclosed location, butt they take fire from the elite secret police every step of the way.

Admittedly, there are two considerable issues of internal logic that plague Mile 22. For one thing, you would think a prodigy like Silva, who supposedly has to slow down his mile-a-minute thoughts by snapping an elastic band on his wrist would realize: “hey, isn’t it funny they always know exactly where we’re going? Why, it is like they can hear us talking.” Also, since Li is played by Iko Uwais, why not just turn him loose on the goons commanded by the sinister Axel?

Of course, Uwais is definitely the best thing going for the film. He has a featured fight scene in the embassy clinic that is up there with his best work in the Raid franchise. He also adapts quite smoothly to the run-and-gun style of action that is the stock-and-trade of Silva’s team. Mark Wahlberg also definitely has the right kind of commando presence, while credibly portraying Silva slightly on the spectrum.

As you would expect, Ronda Rousey holds up her end as team member Sam Snow, but John Malkovich is disappointingly restrained as Mother. Likewise, K-Pop star Chae-rin Lee (CL) does not have much to do as Overwatch controller “Queen,” but hey, she looks fabulous. On the other hand, former New York Ranger (and one-time Vogue magazine intern) Sean Avery has a dynamite sort-of-cameo as “Assault One,” during the prologue.

Action fans, especially those who dug Wahlberg’s previous films with Berg will be utterly shocked by how dark Mile 22 gets. However, you have to give them credit for going there. That is why it is unfair of kneejerk critics to automatically dismiss the film. Yes, Berg and screenwriter Lea Carpenter invite viewers to celebrate the sacrifices made by the American military and intelligence services to protect our liberty, but Silva’s team pays an awfully high price and swallows some profoundly bitter pills during the course of the film. It will leave audiences in a mood of wary vigilance rather than triumphalism. (Yet, if the film is a hit, the sequel practically writes itself.)

Regardless, it is quite a zippy commando movie that makes good use of Uwais, Wahlberg, and their action co-stars. Accessible but gritty, Mile 22 is recommended for mainstream genre fans when it opens today (8/17) across the country, including the AMC Empire in New York.

Patriots Day: The Boston Marathon Bombing from All Angles

It is an official state holiday in Massachusetts, Maine, and Wisconsin, commemorating the Battles of Lexington and Concord (they do not actually celebrate it in Florida, but residents are encouraged to like it on Facebook). By far, the best-known Patriot’s Day event is the Boston Marathon, considered the world’s oldest marathon still held on an annual basis. It still is, even after the storied competition was rocked by tragedy and terror in 2013. The events of the Boston Marathon Bombing unfold from all angles in Peter Berg’s Patriots Day (trailer here), which opens today in New York.

Unless viewers really followed the case closely at the time, Berg and co-screenwriters Matt Cook and Jeff Zetumer will greatly expand your perspective on the savage atrocity and the resulting manhunt. One of our primary POV figures will be Sgt. Tommy Saunders, a composite cop working the finish line as punishment for unspecified disciplinary infractions. As first on the scene and a former beat cop for the neighborhood, Saunders assumes a lead role in FBI Special Agent Richard DesLauriers’ (he’s real) investigation.

Of course, we know radicalized Chechen Islamist brothers Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev were responsible and they planned to plant more pressure cooker-style bombs in Times Square. To get there, they carjacked Chinese national Dun “Danny” Meng, whose story will be a major revelation for many.

In addition to the cops and the terrorists, Berg follows several victims from the start of that fateful Patriot’s Day and throughout the aftermath. Somehow, Berg walks a perfectly fine line, depicting the grisly horror of the bombing, in no uncertain terms, without risking charges of exploitation or bloody shirt-waving. Even after watching the film, most of us civilians still will not really know what it is like to respond to this kind of terrorist attack, but this will be plenty close enough. Some real hardliners might object to the film’s depiction of Dzhokhar as a puppet controlled by his Svengali-like older brother, but their Islamist ideology is clearly and consistently portrayed (as is the younger brother’s taste in hardcore porn).

Mark Wahlberg is terrific, in a blue collar, slow-burning kind of way as Saunders. Obviously, he steps into the role of a Boston copper with a lot of credibility, but it is an honest performance that eschews showiness. Kevin Bacon nicely channels his inner Jack Webb as DesLauriers and J.K. Simmons is well-grizzled as Watertown Sgt. Jeffrey Pugliese.

On the other side of the law, Alex Wolff is eerily petulant and amoral as the younger Tsarnaev, showing chops we’ve never seen from him before. However, the breakout star of Patriots Day should be Jimmy O. Yang, who sure-footedly covers the full emotional gambit as Meng. Arguably, the most poignant scenes feature the immensely likable Jake Picking and Lana Condor as MIT police officer Sean Collier and a robotics graduate student. However, it must be noted Khandi Alexander comes out of nowhere, delivering one of the greatest cameo performances since Alec Baldwin gave the motivational speech from Hell in Glengarry Glen Ross.

Patriots Day definitely goes for the heartstrings, but it earns it the hard way, carefully establishing dozens of characters and their places in the community. If you don’t feel something at the end of the film, you should probably be on a watch-list. Yet, Berg still stages the shootout scenes with enough gusto to impress action movie fans. Very highly recommended, Patriots Day opens today (12/21) in New York, at the Regal Union Square downtown and the AMC Loews Lincoln Square uptown.