The Family Plan Review

Marky Mark and his funky instances of light family developing his thick Boston accent and love of God are ongoing as ever. The Family Plan toes the line of experienced and cheap thrills of a man who wishes to shine his action star but never felt truly comfortable or convincing in straight-shooting thrillers. Shooter and Infinite were both ugly bits of work and so it is back to the drawing board for a man whose best works in the leading man category will be Ted, Ted 2 and Pain & Gain. A hell of a career to bookend with the likes of Spenser Confidential and Father Stu, such is the desire of Wahlberg to head out into the serious categories of acting. Neither worked and he is back now, reserved and a little downtrodden, coughing out family comedies.  

Former assassins in their downtime are a frequent pull now Hollywood has cleared the right songs to bring Ryan Reynolds and Wahlberg the necessary, fumbled and one-note material required to build up their tiresome sway on the big screen. Simon Cellan Jones is given his Hollywood break and all he can muster is consistently muted tones of family dramas unfolding as a retired hitman is brought back into the fold. Where have we heard that one before? Plenty of times before but trialling the old ideas with a new face to them proves dreadfully tiresome when this face is Wahlberg. He has no brand of comedy to hold up as his own, just good writing occasionally throwing him a rope of salvation. Nothing comes from this David Coggeshall script. Nobody can expect more than nothing, and the glazed-over look of Maggie Q and Michelle Monaghan tells it all. They have better places to be than support for Wahlberg.  

Lacking the balls to joke about his real-life routine of waking at two in the morning, The Family Plan is a stifled and worryingly contrite piece of flavourless comedy, an expectation rather than an unfortunate event the more big-budget comedies wade in to try and make clowns out of humourless leads. It has been over a decade since Wahlberg was last funny. Before that, it was two, when all we had of the man was a miserably serious workout video to howl at. Little flow, less pace and a loveless period pass over those watching in on The Family Plan which can add little life to the father-of-three tackling great danger. Grimsby did the same.  

A paint-by-numbers experience which uses the glitz and glam of life in the fast lane as a boring backdrop for hostage situations, holdouts and those usual tremors of a family coming together, bashing against it all through thick and thin. A boneless, flavourless film with the usual run of villains and an extraordinary lack of depth to it despite Monaghan doing her best to sell the family drama running through this. At the end of it all, The Family Plan hopes to shed light on a man who is a stranger to his own family but gives itself a mere half-hour to sort its story out. It feels lifeless and completely vapid, turning itself into a violently miserable piece of fast-cut action filmmaking.