The Family Plan, 2023.
Directed by Simon Cellan Jones.
Starring Mark Wahlberg, Michelle Monaghan, Maggie Q, Zoe Colletti, Van Crosby, Saïd Taghmaoui, Ciarán Hinds, Marcus Anderson, Al Vicente, Valkyrae, and iiTzTimmy.
SYNOPSIS:
A former top assassin living incognito as a suburban dad must take his unsuspecting family on the run when his past catches up to him.
In The Family Plan, another entry in the recent string of action flicks about a vaguely defined contract killer who retired and traded that life for the traditional suburban family one, director Simon Cellan Jones and screenwriter David Coggeshall never find the excitement or humor of that dynamic whereas other films have to varying degrees of effect. The chief issue is that it’s committed to having Mark Wahlberg’s Dan Morgan avoid addressing the elephant in the room to his wife and three children of his former life as Sean, disguising an escape from Buffalo as a spontaneous family vacation to Las Vegas.
The trip serves as a refreshing and daring surprise to Michelle Monaghan’a Jess, a gifted former decathlon who gave up those dreams to be a mom. She is perfectly content that Dan lives life down to a strictly followed schedule, such as taco Tuesday or sex on Thursdays, since he is such a loving and wonderful father and husband. When Dan is not spending time with his wife and children, he is once again the employee of the month at a car dealership, where he typically refuses to allow a picture to be taken of him and slapped on the wall to celebrate each honor. Unsurprisingly, considering his former life, he is averse to social media but also insists that even if he weren’t the former killer, he would still find social media discussing. Nevertheless, everyone’s phones are thrown out the car window as a ploy to encourage family bonding.
These filmmakers believe that keeping the characters on the run, crossing the country, without many confrontations, unless the other families are asleep or not present, makes for engaging suspense. That might work for the first one or two action sequences, but it quickly becomes repetitive as we wait for something remotely interesting to happen with this premise. Instead, the movie concerns generic life lessons about the generational divide between parents and teenage children, such as rebellious anti-establishment political beliefs or the legitimacy of gaming as a worthwhile hobby.
At the very least, it makes sense that Dan would be anti-gaming, factoring in his past work as a killer, but it still comes across as underdeveloped and clichéd. Even when the story finds a reason to put them in a game of laser tag against one another, pitting Dad’s real-life combat experience against son’s (Van Crosby) strategic skills from years of digital warfare (his game of choice is the cartoonish-looking deathmatch team-based Valorant), there is no tension or fun. The scene is a rushed, badly edited mess that doesn’t take advantage of who these characters are.
There isn’t much better to say about the other segments, which see Dan indulging his daughter (Zoe Colletti) to check out an Iowa college campus; she finds out some devastating news about her long-term boyfriend, whereas Mom finds herself proving that she can chug beer doing it upside down handstand. It’s bottom-of-the-barrel bonding material that doesn’t feel unique when Dan teaches his daughter nonlethal means to get revenge on her partner.
Hope is still there that once the family finds out the truth, something exciting might come of this, but from there, The Family Plan just finds more clichés to fall into without ever putting together a memorable action sequence. Other films in this genre have visceral violence going for them, whereas family man Mark Wahlberg is trying to go the route of heart over brutality. In theory, it’s a subversive idea, and that heart is in the right place, but it doesn’t work when everything else is lazy and uninspired.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ / Movie: ★
Robert Kojder is a member of the Chicago Film Critics Association and the Critics Choice Association. He is also the Flickering Myth Reviews Editor. Check here for new reviews, follow my Twitter or Letterboxd, or email me at MetalGearSolid719@gmail.com
