The Family Plan

The Family Plan is a 2023 American action comedy film directed by Simon Cellan Jones and written by David Coggeshall. Produced by Apple Studios and Skydance Media and Mark Wahlberg's Municipal Pictures, it stars Wahlberg as a suburban car salesman who goes on the run with his unsuspecting family when his secret past as a government assassin is exposed. Michelle Monaghan, Zoe Colletti, Van Crosby, Saïd Taghmaoui, Maggie Q, and Ciarán Hinds also star.

Production began in late 2022. The film was released by Apple TV+ on December 15, 2023.

Plot
Dan Morgan, an ex-assassin who works as a car salesman, lives quietly in the Buffalo suburbs with his wife Jessica and their three kids; teens Nina and Kyle, and infant child Max. Dan is content with his low-key life and dislikes violence, technology, and social media. Meanwhile, Jessica yearns for more spontaneity and excitement.

Dan and Jessica attend a carnival for their anniversary. He has a confrontation when someone purposely takes a selfie with them kissing in the background as a joke, then posts it on his social media. Dan walks away, refusing to engage in a fight. Soon after, Dan is attacked in a supermarket while shopping with Max and easily defeats the highly trained attacker. Afterward, Dan contacts his former associate, Augie, to find out why it happened. He suggests it is Dan's former employer, McCaffrey, and advises him to disappear.

Dan, realizing the carnival photo outed him, orders new passports for him and his family. He retrieves Nina from school, Kyle from a secret game house as he is a popular gaming streamer, and Jessica from work, telling them they're taking a spontaneous road trip to Las Vegas, where he is meeting Augie to collect the new documents.

As they're leaving town, Dan realizes they're being followed; therefore, their minivan must have a tracker on it. At work, he uses a service bay to find and remove it from the undercarriage. Meanwhile, McCaffrey and his team search the Morgans' home but can't find their destination, as Dan has covered their tracks. He drives through the night until reaching Iowa City. Excited, Nina begs them to visit Southern Iowa University as she hopes to follow her boyfriend Trevor there rather than pursue her original goal of attending Stanford. She catches Trevor cheating on her, so Dan teaches her martial arts moves to use on him. During a campus tour, Dan fights another of McCaffery’s assassins and incapacitates him in a chemistry lab before rejoining his family.

As they travel, the family grows closer. Arriving in Vegas, Dan plans to tell Jessica the truth over a romantic dinner. The teens are to babysit Max in their penthouse suite, but all go down to the HyperX gaming arena. When Dan and Jessica return to their suite to check on the kids, McCaffrey's team attacks them. He quickly kills them, shocking Jessica. Heading to HyperX to retrieve the kids, a shootout ensues, and his family witnesses him kill more assassins.

Revealing his real name as Sean, Dan finally comes clean to his family, who are outraged by his deception. He nevertheless gives them their new IDs, telling them that their lives in Buffalo are over, but Jessica takes the kids and leaves the next morning, believing they aren't in danger if they leave Dan. She calls her friend, Gwen, a travel agent who offers to fly them home.

On the private jet, Gwen reveals she works for McCaffrey and is Dan’s ex-girlfriend, who she is angry at for leaving. Handing Jessica and the kids over to McCaffery, he takes them hostage. McCaffrey, who is revealed to be Dan’s father, threatens to kill them unless Dan accepts his offer to rejoin his team but no contact with his family. He relents, and Jessica and the kids are to return home.

Jessica and the kids escape after she kills their escort, and they go back for Dan. McCaffrey calls his army into the hotel to kill him. Dan engages the mercenaries, with Kyle helping with a drone. Jessica fights Gwen, culminating in Jessica fatally impaling her with a piece of broken bamboo as a javelin from her track and field experience. They head downstairs, where Nina distracts McCaffrey from killing Dan, giving him time to knock McCaffrey out, and he is taken into custody.

The Morgans returned to their lives in Buffalo; Dan now runs a security firm to train clients to better defend against attacks while Jessica coaches high school track and field. They then load up a rented RV to embark on a cross-country road trip to take Nina to Stanford.

Production
In August 2022, Apple Studios announced an action comedy film from Skydance Media and Municipal Pictures to star Mark Wahlberg. In October 2022, Michelle Monaghan and Saïd Taghmaoui joined the cast. Other cast members added were Ciarán Hinds, Maggie Q, Zoe Colletti, Van Crosby and Miles Doleac.

Principal photography commenced in October 2022 in Atlanta, Georgia, under the working title Holiday Road. A car dealership in Canton, Georgia, was used as a location for the film. A helicopter was used to film aerial footage in downtown Buffalo, New York, in early November. An ice cream shop in Clermont, Georgia, was transformed into Lambert's Diner for the film. In February 2023, Wahlberg filmed scenes at The Strat casino resort in Las Vegas and also wrapped filming.

Release
The film was released on Apple TV+ on December 15, 2023. Deadline Hollywood reported the film became Apple TV+'s most watched film.

Reception
Guy Lodge of Variety gave a negative review, calling the film a "strangely sluggish shoot-'em-up". He criticized Coggeshall's script, writing that it "repeatedly underlines the mismatch between the wholesome white-bread family at its center and the hard-boiled genre proceedings in which it increasingly embroils them, but with no accompanying sense of giddy absurdism". Calum Marsh writing for The New York Times gave a positive review; he praised director Jones saying that he "maintains a good handle on the comic-thriller tone and shoots the action with wit and creativity" and wrote that, "Wahlberg is more charismatic than he's been onscreen in nearly a decade".

Frank Scheck of The Hollywood Reporter wrote, "Stretching its high concept but thin results to the breaking point, The Family Plan feels like a movie whose best moments were during the pitch meeting" and that "to say it's predictable is an insult to predictability". The Guardian Peter Bradshaw said: "The script works efficiently and everyone involved sells it hard; there are continuous closeup cutaways to that cute and gurgling baby who never cries no matter what happens. But the sheer robotic sheen of the film in the end works against it; Dan's teen son happens to be a super-talented gamer and in fact the whole movie has a Grand Theft Auto aesthetic".