The Family Plan movie review: Mark Wahlberg’s assassin comedy is the stupider version of Manoj Bajpayee’s The Family Man

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Hollywood’s equivalent of Salman Khan stumbles through the movie with a inscrutable expression on his face. This may or may not be a performance choice, considering how calm his character, Dan Morgan, must come across as at all times. Dan, you see, isn’t the suburban dad that he’s pretending to be. He’s actually a covert assassin with over 30 kills under his belt. Dan has successfully concealed his true identity from his family for nearly two decades, choosing to stay quiet even as a bunch of college guys emasculate him in front of his wife and pour a Slurpee on his head.

But Dan’s past identity is activated when a goon tries to attack him at a supermarket one day — there’s no explanation for this, by the way — leaving him with no choice but to gather his family together, stuff them into his minivan, and drive cross-country to Las Vegas. His cover fully blown, Dan’s only option is to fabricate new identities for everybody and start afresh. And because the movie would immediately end if he doesn’t, he decides to continue lying to them, and behaves like they’re going on a family vacation instead.

It is in moments like this that you can spot a movie’s gears turning. How long can things be pushed before certain characters start coming across as complete idiots? And that’s exactly what happens in The Family Plan. How in the world is it possible for Dan’s wife and two teenage kids to remain oblivious about his true nature even as they’re chased across the country by gangsters and assassins? There’s no elegant way of doing this without making them seem stupid, but The Family Plan doesn’t even try. In an early scene, Dan hurls their phones out of the window, into a river — unforgivable behaviour that only seems to take place in movies, because in real life, the trip would’ve ended then and there.

And yet, the movie finds time to resolve Dan’s personal issues with his children. He struggles to understand his son, who has cultivated something of a secret identity of his own as a Twitch streamer. His daughter, on the other hand, wants to give up on her dreams of becoming a journalist and follow a guy she likes to a different city. Meanwhile, Dan’s wife, played by Michelle Monaghan, is beginning to grow a little bored of their routine lifestyle. None of these subplots have any business being in an assassin comedy. They’re the reason The Family Plan is nearly two hours long. 

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And remember, this is a film that forgot to cast anybody as the villain, and then, seemingly in a panic, got Ciaran Hinds to appear for a one-scene cameo. But surprisingly, this is also one of the few times where an Indian project can be identified as a far superior alternative to a Hollywood film with the same premise. Prime Video’s The Family Man is just as effective an espionage thriller as it is a family drama. At the very least, its star was committed to giving it their best.

The Family Plan
Director – Simon Cellan Jones
Cast – Mark Wahlberg, Michelle Monaghan, Saïd Taghmaoui, Maggie Q, Zoe Colletti, Van Crosby
Rating – 1.5/5