‘The Family Plan’: Mark Wahlberg’s Past and Present Collide in Middling Action Comedy

Sandra Miska

Mark Wahlberg, who famously played a contract killer living a double life in “The Big Hit,” treads some familiar territory in Apple TV+’s by the numbers action comedy “The Family Plan,” a relatively tame assassin turned family man movie about a husband and father whose past catches up to him. Whalberg plays Dan Morgan, a used car salesman living in Buffalo whose biggest problem appears to be his teenagers giving him crap, but that changes after he is attacked by a would-be assassin while grocery shopping with his baby son. As it turns out, he was a mercenary before he met his wife, something he has kept secret for over 18 years. Feeling he has no choice but to start over with a new identity, he convinces his wife, Jessica (Michelle Monaghan), to take an impromptu family trip to Las Vegas. The one thing he leaves out is his plan to take them into an unofficial witness protection program of sorts in Canada.

Along for the ride is Morgan daughter Nina (Zoe Colletti), a formerly overachieving 17 year old who was bound for Stanford before becoming influenced by her boyfriend, Trevor (Colby Burton), an outwardly progressive college freshman who turns out to just be a douchebag. There’s also son Kyle (Van Crosby), a gamer with a large online following, something his parents find silly and a waste of time. Rounding out the family is ten-month-old Max, Dan and Jessica’s surprise baby. Jessica and the kids have no idea about Dan’s past, and it becomes increasingly unbelievable that they do not realize that something is seriously amiss, especially after he throws all of their cell phones out of the window of a moving car (he insists on driving all the way to Vegas for safety reasons).

“The Family Plan” milks the type of humor one would expect from this kind of film, including a scene in which Dan fights off another would-be assassin by squirting Max’s bottle into his eye. Later, there is a struggle that ends with a henchman getting a dirty diaper smashed into his face. These baddies are all tied to one big evil-doer, Dan’s former boss, McCaffrey (Ciarán Hinds, an actor we are more used to seeing in more serious projects). More authentic funny moments include Dan trailing a suspicious-looking man, only to realize that he is not another bad guy; he’s just German. There’s also a satisfying sequence in which Dan helps Nina stand up to Trevor after she catches him in a compromising position.

Wahlberg may be entering into a more family-friend phase of his career, but he is still Mark Wahlberg — as one of Nina’s perceptive friends points out, he’s hot — and there is plenty of ass-kicking and shootouts here. “The Family Plan” is formulaic and predictable at times, but one takeaway from it is that everyone lives a double life to an extent, and that we often put aside one identity when we enter into a relationship, become a parent, become more popular etc. For example, Jessica was once an aspiring Olympian, something that comes to be important in the third act.

 “The Family Plan” begins streaming Dec. 15 on Apple TV+.