The two leads play an ex-girlfriend who tries to save the world together. They have good chemistry, but the film lacks enough personality to make their low-key, madcap dynamic worthwhile.

Life reached its peak in high school for Mike McKenna (Mark Wahlberg), while then-sweetheart Roxanne Hall (Halle Berry) managed to escape dead-end New Jersey and travel the world. While he joined the local construction workers’ union, she joined the Union, a secret spy ring about which Roxanne bluntly claims, “Half the intelligence community doesn’t know we exist, and the other half are sorry they ever found out.”

A lazy wish-fulfillment fantasy from Netflix’s star-studded department, “The Union” is actually the story of a reunion — that of Mike and Roxanne — set against the backdrop of a crisis we’ve seen too often in recent spy movies. For Wahlberg, the wish in question is to be James Bond, which will never happen for the Dorchester-born American. And the fantasy is to play the next best thing, recruited by former Bond girl Halle Berry (sporting her weirdest haircut since “Swordfish,” an anime-style pixie cut, shaved on one side, spiky and blonde on top).

The big idea of the movie is to cram a blue-collar guy into an action movie who fits the numbers, and the excuse barely holds up. Someone has “stolen information on every man and woman who has ever served a Western allied country” (which sounds a lot like the NOC list plot from the original “Mission: Impossible” movie), and to get that information back, the Union needs someone who’s not on the list. They need a nobody, and Roxanne knows just the man for the job.