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    ‘The Family Plan’ Review: Who’s Your Daddy?

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    Mark Wahlberg plays a husband and father hiding a secret identity in this breezy, entertaining action-comedy.“The Family Plan” has a familiar premise: A seemingly ordinary family man with a clandestine identity is hiding a violent past. It’s been done as farce, in “True Lies,” and as drama, in “A History of Violence,” in both instances to rousing effect. “Family Plan,” starring Mark Wahlberg as the dissembling patriarch, plays it for laughs, using his deception and its unraveling as a springboard for screwball comedy.It takes the form of an action picaresque, when Wahlberg’s Dan, a former hit man using an alias, whisks his unwitting family on a cross-country road trip, trying to evade the approaching assassins who’ve exposed his suburban ruse. Dan, his wife (Michelle Monaghan), their bickering teenagers (Zoe Colletti and Van Crosby) and their 10-month-old baby cruise from Buffalo to Vegas in their minivan, flailing through high-speed getaways and shootouts along the way.This is pretty routine material, but it’s been realized with charm and enthusiasm: The director, Simon Cellan Jones, maintains a good handle on the comic-thriller tone and shoots the action with wit and creativity, finding clever ways to integrate the diapers and BabyBjörns of fatherhood into the brisk, “John Wick”-style fight scenes. (Highlights include a whisper-quiet car chase set to Enya’s “Only Time” and some grocery store kung fu involving an infant.)Wahlberg is more charismatic than he’s been onscreen in nearly a decade, and his chemistry with Monaghan is the foundation of a plausible marriage — they keep the domestic aspect grounded, even as the assassin stuff gets a touch ludicrous. The great Ciaran Hinds is the villain, appearing to enjoy himself as much as everybody else. He, too, understood the assignment: Have fun.The Family PlanRated PG-13. Running time: 1 hour 58 minutes. Watch on Apple TV+. More

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      ‘Black Site’ Review: Stranger Danger

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      A murderous detainee and a damaged C.I.A. agent face off in this uninspired action movie.Perhaps the most depressing thing about Sophia Banks’s “Black Site” — a dreary, underwritten thriller — is an ending that suggests a sequel might already be in the works. For the sake of its beleaguered star, Michelle Monaghan, I can only hope not.Playing the bereaved C.I.A. Agent Abby Trent, Monaghan strives to add depth and humanity to a character that, like almost everyone else onscreen, is barely more than a margin note. Assigned to a secret underground facility in the Jordanian desert known as the Citadel (the collective brainchild, we learn, of five English-speaking democracies), Abby oversees the enthusiastic interrogation of suspected terrorists. Just as she’s about to be recalled to D.C., a team arrives with a high-value prisoner named Hatchet (Jason Clarke), a man whose questioning Abby has reason to take very personally.Whether it’s beefy brutes force-feeding an Arab detainee, or Abby locking horns with a pair of sadistic private contractors, Jinder Ho’s screenplay crumples beneath boilerplate dialogue (“These people are dangerous!”) and hackneyed setups. When, inevitably, Hatchet escapes and begins offing his captors, the movie briefly jolts with shamefaced energy before settling into a tedious chase through a warren of gray concrete. This involves much running around in the dark with guns and flashlights, while a string-heavy soundtrack sweats to conjure an excitement that remains stubbornly elusive.Cheap-looking and unpleasant — too many scenes boast a sickly green sheen, as if viewed through a haze of nausea — “Black Site” is a pointless rehash of war-on-terror tropes. The more bodies pile up, the less reason we have to care.Black SiteRated R for potty mouths and plasma-splattered murders. Running time: 1 hour 32 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on Amazon, Apple TV and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More

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      ‘Every Breath You Take’ Review: The Therapist as Trauma Victim

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      Casey Affleck plays a vaunted psychiatrist whose life and career are derailed after he boasts about a miraculous new technique, which then fails tragically.With chillingly minimal interiors, ominously crescendoing music, and a bluish-gray palette, “Every Breath You Take” announces itself as a thriller in predictable ways. Directed by Vaughn Stein and written by David K. Murray, the movie coasts on so many tropes that you almost expect it to subvert them, but the plot remains equally foreseeable.At a conference, a renowned psychiatrist, Dr. Philip Clark (Casey Affleck), boasts of his ethically ambiguous therapeutic method — which involves sharing his own deep secrets with patients — that has kept one of them, the suicidally inclined Daphne (Emily Alyn Lind), stable and off medications. Later that night, she commits suicide.At the scene, Dr. Clark meets Daphne’s distraught brother, (Sam Claflin). James later earns an invitation to dinner at the Clarks’ and eventually wins over Philip’s wife, Grace (Michelle Monaghan), and daughter, Lucy (India Eisley), with his charming English accent, dimpled smile and wounded puppy demeanor. James becomes a dangerous new presence in their lives. Claflin elevates the formulaic quality by playfully wavering between charismatic and psychotic as he burrows deeper into the Clark women’s lives, and thus Philip’s psyche.At the same time, Philip’s reputation is being razed by anonymous letters, though he claims he has no idea who is behind them. All the characters become shockingly dense pawns, with the women most notably getting caught in the cross hairs. Monaghan’s character, especially, is undermined. The film opens with her own tragedy — the death of her son in a car accident — a development that comes back briefly and insignificantly. With only a few fleeting moments of nail-biting thrills, “Every Breath You Take” remains mostly tepid and frustrating.Rated R for Sam Claflin’s wreaking havoc. Running time: 1 hour 45 minutes.Every Breath You TakeRated R. Running time: 1 hour 45 minutes. In select theaters and on Google Play, FandangoNow and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. Please consult the guidelines outlined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention before watching movies inside theaters. More