A fair chunk of moviegoers harbor a certain fussiness about realism that I could never bring myself to understand. These folk, regardless of what kind of film they thrust themselves into, will be so dedicated to spotting plot holes and despising the acting, that they’ll forget to well and truly watch the movie.

This obsession with realism, I presume, dissipates rather quickly when you’ve established even a vague proximity to the film world like I have. The reason being that you become painfully aware that fully grown, allegedly professional adults allow films like Flight Risk to get made the way they do. Once you ively comprehend this, there is absolutely nothing on this godless green Earth that could for you as “unrealistic” anymore, because anything is possible at that point.

Flight Risk stars Michelle Dockery as Madelyn Harris, a Deputy U.S. Marshal who’s tasked with escorting a man named Winston (Topher Grace) from Alaska to New York so that he can testify against the Moretti crime family. They board a non-descript plane flown by pilot Darryl Booth (Mark Wahlberg), but when the pilot turns out to be a hitman sent to kill Winston, the journey begins to unravel quite perilously.

The goal of making this film even halfway bearable is to regard it as a parody because none of Flight Risk‘s moving parts give the impression that this was an honest attempt at an action thriller, or even a crude action comedy, as it more often behaves. In its sea of meaningless intrigue (more on that later), the greatest mystery of Flight Risk is what exactly drew Mel Gibson of all people to the director’s chair.

It’s no easy nor responsible task to separate Gibson from his infamous past, but speaking purely from a filmmaking perspective, Gibson has firmly established himself as a serious storyteller. It’s hard to deny the prowess of the grit, scope, and drama of Braveheart, Apocalypto, and Hacksaw Ridge, and even his lesser directorial outings at least had a sheen of robust effort. But in Flight Risk, the film opens to a neon motel sign with the letters “O” and “T” shorted out (thereby spelling “Mel” in giant letters), as if to purposely telegraph how idiotic the next 90 minutes are going to be. Indeed, Gibson directing thoroughly non-Gibson-coded material is the film’s greatest joke, as well as the crux of its accidental parody.

But back to the point of 90 idiotic minutes, Gibson and company deliver on that front. Topher Grace is up a creek with no paddle as Winston, the meek fish-out-of-water who’s ostensibly meant to be the comic relief, as though awkwardly announcing that you peed your pants — and other gags like it — is worth the price of a movie ticket. This would be indefensible just on its own, but Grace can’t even manifest an impression of comedic timing here; a likely casualty of the creative discord that Flight Risk reeks of.

Dockery is no better as Madelyn, who finds herself at the center of a couple of predicaments, including keeping the hitman incapacitated, contending with the corruption back home in the justice department, landing the plane, flirting with a pilot named Hassan who’s going to help her land said plane, and keeping Winston alive.

If this sounds like too many plot threads to tie up in 90 minutes, it’s because it is. Most of these beats only exist to give the illusion that something is happening in this movie, and even then, Flight Risk doesn’t seem to know which ones — if any — are even worth pretending to invest in. As a result, Dockery has no real way to approach Harris sincerely, because the character’s personal drama has no narrative relevance, and exists entirely to fill the gaps between the action. And that’s if the film decides to go there instead of pivoting to more nervous stammering from Winston.

None of these things — Harris’ past and the police corruption, Winston’s panicky demeanor and guilt, and the violent clashes with the pilot — boast any meaningful cohesion. It’s as though Flight Risk thought it could coast by on the presence of Wahlberg’s killer pilot alone, only to realize that he would need to spend half of the movie handcuffed to the wall to make a feature-length runtime work, thereby neutering the danger/tension and requiring the film to gerrymander a rickety story about trust in its place. It grasps at straws and we viewers choke on its negligence.

Finally, there’s the matter of Wahlberg, who bookends Flight Risk‘s unintentional parody chops. Let’s face it; regardless of the prowess he’s shown in likes of Boogie Nights, The Departed, The Fighter, and others, it can be difficult not to impulsively confine Wahlberg to a colorful-tongued, half-delinquent archetype who lives and dies by the twang of his New England accent.

Here, he comes at us with a pronounced Southern drawl while the reveal of his true identity simmers underneath the character’s opening moments. No sooner does he drop the mask, however, do we find out that the Kentucky spice in his voice is also as fake as his toupee. And in its place? You guessed it; that ever-definitive Bostonian inflection. The fourth towel has been thrown into the ring, except this one matches the wink-adjacent energy of having Gibson in the driver’s seat of such a frail story.

From then on, Wahlberg descends into a truly perverted state of jester’s privilege, rhyming off vulgarity after misogynistic vulgarity and existing for no other purpose than to irritate and stab Winston and Madelyn. He’s easy to cheer against, but that doesn’t mean much when Flight Risk harbors a near-sadistic neglect for its characters. Indeed, Wahlberg’s hitman barely qualifies as an antagonist here given the artificiality of the would-be protagonists. Similar sentiments could be applied to Flight Risk across the board.

I’m choosing to believe that Jared Rosenberg’s original script (voted onto the 2020 Black List along with the Oscar-nominated screenplay of May December) was completely and utterly hacked to pieces at various stages of the production line. The disted emptiness of Flight Risk‘s proceedings certainly read as shadows of a different story (even three different stories) and the sheer lack of enthusiasm that ricochets between the three actors and Gibson is nauseatingly contagious, and could itself be the result of having signed up for one thing, and then working on a much worse thing.

But regardless of how Flight Risk started out, we can only judge the version that arrived in theaters, and that version is the foulest sort of foul that we’ll see all year. And even if you take the wisest possible route and canonize Flight Risk as a parody in your head alone, the fact that you need to do that in the first place says everything about this horrid state of affairs.

Mark Wahlberg is no stranger to going through the extremes when it comes to staying fit. He’s done a 16 hour fast to torch fat, soak his body in ice baths for recovery after an intense workout routine, and more. But his latest feat of going 63 hours without anything solid to eat and doing intense workouts at that has left his fans concerned for his health, because heck, how can you possibly function properly with an empty stomach is beyond me. Even after 16 hours you can already feel the hunger kicking in.

A firm member of the “4am workout club,” the 53-year-old actor took on the challenge to stay jacked and he successfully conquered it with great results. He took to his Instagram to showcase his abs and muscle definition and saying he lost over 10 pounds.

Wahlberg shared a series of videos to share his progress, announcing that he was at 192 pounds before dropping to 180.9 by the end of his 63 hour fast. He even lifted his shirt to reveal his well-defined abs then the videos transitioned to a montage of his intense workouts alongside a friend.

So how did he manage to even lift his legs and carry all those weights on his shoulders and not get hungry? In the videos, he was seen doing squats, goblet squats, TRX sissy squats, and Smith machine back squats. Over at the comments section, some suggested that his fasting involved bone broth which could explain his strength. But Wahlberg itted that yes, throughout his 63 hours fast, all he did was think about food. Yet, he still felt great and still had a lot of energy.

Let’s give it to Marky Mark for that amazing result and he was thrilled with his efforts too. Although, some of his fans thought he was out of his mind for going all 63 hours without anything to eat while exercising. One wrote: “You need to eat” and another commented: “I would have a migraine by hour 5! 63 hours? #Areyoucrazy">in a recent interview: “Normally with intermittent fasting, I eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I’ll eat at noon, 3pm and 6pm for an eighteen-hour fast and a six-hour eating window.” He reaches for high-protein foods to boost his gains. Breakfast would be eggs, protein pancakes, smoked salmon, a few pork chops, a few sausage links, and almond butter, lunch is chicken and bok choy, while dinner would be steak, fish, and “some sort of vegetable.” He still drinks coffee in the morning to power him through the day and for cheat day, he said it depends sometimes pasta, cookies, or chocolate.

Back in the summer of 2022, cinemas around North America were gearing up for a film that would be more accurately characterized as a promise. That film was Beast, and the promise was that Idris Elba was absolutely, positively going to fight a lion. This was one of the most brilliant cinematic promises ever made, as most would agree that Idris Elba fighting a lion is very much worth watching.

It went on to gross $59 million against a $36 million production budget; a solid accomplishment considering its competition with Bullet Train, Top Gun: Maverick, and Nope at the time. Nowadays, it’s making a similar accomplishment on streaming.

Per FlixPatrol, this day of Oct. 22 has seen Beast claw its way up the worldwide Max rankings and settle in at sixth place, ahead of 2024’s Will Smith box office bastion Bad Boys: Ride or Die in ninth place, and Arthur the King — the Mark Wahlberg-led drama about an adventure racer that befriends a lost dog before taking him on an adventure through the Dominican wilderness — in 10th place.

Beast stars Elba as Dr. Nate Samuels, a widowed father of two daughters, Meredith (Iyana Halley) and Norah (Leah Sava Jeffries), who he’s had trouble being present for ever since he lost his wife (their mother) to cancer. Hoping to reconnect as a family, he plans a family vacation to South Africa, where his wife grew up. The only problem? An unbelievably pissed-off lion happens to be lurking nearby, and Nate and his family are in its crosshairs.

Beast‘s sworn mission is to put Elba toe-to-toe with a lion, and it succeeds without a scratch (without a metaphorical scratch, that is; the actual scratches are many and extreme). The man vs lion combat makes for solid entertainment, but Beast doesn’t skimp on overall storytelling, either.

You see, the reason the lion is so pissed off is because hunters slaughtered its entire family, and now Nate is trying to prevent that lion from bestowing the same fate on his own. In this way, Beast offers genuinely fascinating emotions and ideas; we can cheer for Nate, while still being saddened by the necessity of the lion’s defeat, and even reflect on how the cycle of life and death inherent in the lifespan of every animal only becomes tragic, or even immoral, when humans get involved.

Beast doesn’t explore these ideas of tragedy, survival, or the emotional heft of the natural world beyond their relevance to Nate’s peril. Still, even a lukewarm film gains traction when it commits to honest storytelling, rooted primarily in emotion; a narrative that feels sincere beckons us to a sincere kind of analysis, both of a particular story beat and, by extension, the whole movie. This give and take between the emotional impact of a film, and the emotional response of a viewer, is the movie magic in Beast that nobody talks about, presumably because its more spectacular movie magic — that of Idris Elba-versus-a-lion — takes precedence.

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Netflix has perfected the art of convincing its subscribers to watch the torrent of star-studded, poorly-made, irony-clad indistinguishable action movies it premieres on its platform every other week. The Union, a movie currently holding a dismal 27% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, somehow making it to the top of the streamer’s most-watched films of the week, per FlixPatrol, is a prime example.

Halle Berry sporting a Storm-inspired hairdo and Mark Wahlberg of Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch fame unite in this action-meets-rom-com film about a spy tasking her former high-school boyfriend, who has probably never even held a gun in his life, with retrieving a mega-secret inventory from some bad guys.

Those same viewers who have seemingly contributed to The Union besting the likes of Kingsman: The Secret Service and Kingsman: The Golden Circle (which together have made nearly a billion dollars worldwide) have called the film “an insult to [their] intelligence,” a “forgettable run of the mill spy thriller,” and the “most boring and predictable movie of the year.”

To be completely fair, Berry and Wahlberg still hold enough star power to carry a bad movie on their backs and the critics do surprisingly favor the film over the audience’s reception, giving it a slightly higher average rating of 42%. For The Guardian, Adrian Horton praises the lead duo’s star power and the lighthearted agreeableness of the film’s action, while The Hollywood Reporter‘s Frank Scheck compares The Union to a McDonald’s burger — no substance or nutrition whatsoever, but you still won’t mind taking that bite.

While we’re always happy to see Ms. Berry kick some ass, it’s still hard to believe, and a little bit annoying, how Netflix keeps getting away with this. Read We Got This Covered’s review of The Union here.

To stand out, a spy movie must have breathtaking action set pieces or an intricate script that doesn’t underestimate the viewer, preferably both. Starring Mark Wahlberg and Halle Berry, Netflix’s The Union has neither.

The Union introduces yet another secret intelligence agency that works in the shadows to defend the Western world from unknown threats. However, what supposedly makes the titular Union unique compared to other espionage franchises is that all its recruits come from blue-collar jobs. The idea is that lower-class people can easily disappear in the crowd, as they are used to being invisible. That means the Union prefers to teach the working person how to shoot, parkour, and falsify identities rather than train a white-collar worker to wait tables properly, for instance.

The movie follows Berry as Roxanne, a Union agent who needs to recruit an outsider after her team is betrayed and killed during an operation that went south. Her choice is Mike (Wahlberg), a construction worker who still lives in his mother’s home. The Union follows Mike and Roxanne as they try to untangle the mystery of the dead agents while reliving their decades-old high school fling.

There is some merit in creating a spy agency with only essential workers. It’s a promising concept that should have allowed writers Joe Barton and David Guggenheim to approach old espionage tropes from a different angle. However, as much as The Union wants to appear unique, everything beyond its recruiting process fits the templates created by movie series such as Mission: Impossible. 

The Union agents are still dependent on almost magical technological tools, with gear and gadgets that come from the same multimillionaire pipeline as every other government agency. So, in the end, it doesn’t really matter if the Union is composed of blue collars, as their planning, strategy, and execution stick to the things we’ve already seen somewhere else.

The script’s lack of imagination also extends to its character dynamics. Mike is quickly thrust into the Union as the miraculous solution to a complex problem. There’s a training montage, of course, that underlines how fast Mike learns the ropes of being a spy, rushing through six months of training in only two weeks. After that, he’s already put on the field, throwing fists against highly skilled assassins and surviving all sorts of near-death situations. In her turn, Berry is a femme fatale who doesn’t know defeat and uses her mastery of every weapon to always come up on top.

Together, Mike and Roxanne are as bland as action heroes can be, moving from set piece to set piece while following breadcrumbs left behind by obnoxiously simple villains. The movie tries to give the duo some dramatic tension by hammering down the fact they used to date in high school. Still, even that falls flat as Mike and Roxanne inevitably fall in love with each other again, slowly resisting their urges in the name of the mission until fate brings them together.

If that’s not enough to illustrate how shallow The Union can be, it’s worth noting that the twists in the plot can be anticipated after just a couple of minutes, as the movie shamelessly recycles the story told in better movies. Plus, to add insult to injury, villains will still take their time to monologue and connect all the obvious pieces to ensure the audience understands the plot, even if they spend two hours looking at their phones.

Even if clichés can be annoying, not everyone is a film buff, and the familiarity with The Union’s plot might even be lost to some viewers. So, it’s important to clarify there is nothing particularly wrong with The Union beyond its lack of creativity. However, every aspect of the movie highlights how this is the classic second-screen content streamers like to produce, something to leave on when chatting with friends or playing a game. The stakes are low, the story is familiar, and the dialogue is so plain and redundant that there is absolutely no way to feel lost, even if you grab a pizza without hitting pause.

Even the action scenes of The Union are mediocre, at best. From car chases to rooftop battles, the movie never takes any real risk, betting on commonplace choreographies and editing to keep viewers entertained without paying too much attention to what’s happening on the screen. It’s no surprise, then, that set pieces overstay their welcome as they are stretched to increase the movie’s runtime – Netflix’s biggest metric for success is the total amount of minutes that a piece of content is played worldwide.

Like most second-screen content, The Union only stands out due to its star-studded cast. There’s only so much good actors can do to elevate a boring script. Even so, The Union does boast some noteworthy performances.

Berry can’t do much, as Roxanne is a unidimensional badass without a single interesting layer beyond her desire to help people. Considering that The Mothership got canceled, that’s twice in the last year that Netflix sabotaged the actress. 

On the other hand, Wahlberg can at least pretend he’s dealing with a gripping moral conundrum as he tries to defend his uneventful life as one that’s worth living, even though he quickly embraces his new spy gig. While the reasoning behind Mike’s splintered loyalty doesn’t stand one minute of critical thinking, at least this gives Wahlberg enough material to show why he’s such a beloved star.

Beyond the leading couple, The Union also counts on the always incredible J.K. Simmons. That man is a national treasure that can do wonders with just a bunch of poorly written lines, and it’s always fun to see him enter the scene. Juliett Quinn is also delightful, but everyone else is mostly there to pop up on occasional scenes, grab their checks, and go home.

What’s most surprising about The Union is how Netflix is clearly testing the waters to turn it into a franchise. The movie tells a standalone story, but the fate of some characters is purposely left open for a sequel to be produced if the story is well received. At least this time, Netflix’s hopes for a spy universe lay on a forgettable movie instead of the disastrous Heart of Stone. Plus, since Gal Gadot’s offensively bad action flick was a huge hit, The Union will likely become one too. By being average, it already deserves more.

As we grow older, our perspectives change. Our approach to life becomes less brash. Our grow less funky. And, with any luck, our investments begin to pay dividends. Take, for example, the case of Mark Wahlberg. Once, he was a firebrand, fly-by-night pop star, then a rising actor. Then everything changed when he starred in Boogie Nights, the universally-acclaimed story of a man (Wahlberg) who waits until he goes to bed to pick his nose. Full disclosure, I never saw Boogie Nights. 

The financial prognosticators over at Celebrity Net Worth, through divination and considered ing, have put Wahlberg’s estimated personal holdings at a staggering $400 million. They also say that Leonardo DiCaprio has around $300 million to his name. “Mark Wahlberg has more money than Leonardo DiCaprio” might not sound right to your ears, but if you phrase it slightly differently – “Mark Wahlberg could buy more fighter jets with flames painted on their sides than Leonardo DiCaprio” – it’s a fact that goes down a little easier.

The secret to Wahlberg’s success and, by extension, Leo’s relative failure, lies in the fact that nobody would go to a restaurant called “DiCaprese Salads.” Mark Wahlberg’s chain of Wahlburgers restaurants, which he shares ownership of with escaped proto-Wahlbergs Donnie and Paul, is 50 chains strong, generating an estimated $100 million a year. At a $10.99 price point, that’s enough to buy 6 million Our Burgers with Paul’s sauce and pickles and still tip the waitstaff generously.

Additionally – and this is true, ask your friends – Mark Wahlberg stars in blockbuster movies, which is a pretty solid line of work to be in, financially speaking. With Transformers: The Last Knight, Daddy’s Home 2, and All the Money in the World, he became the highest-paid American actor in 2017. Reuters reported his earnings that year at $68 million, beating out Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’s pathetic, emasculating $65 million and probably making him feel tiny and weak. Then there are the ad spots. With Hollywood fame comes the promise of endorsement deals, and the 52-year-old actor has made bank on those as well, earning a reported $10 million for his work representing AT&T alone. It’s not wonder the singer of Good Vibrations enjoys a 33% higher personal worth than the star of Titanic.

More than any of that, though? Do you know what Mark Wahlberg has that Leonardo DiCaprio doesn’t? A high school diploma. He graduated in 2013 at age 42. DiCaprio never did. Stay in school, kids. It could mean a difference of $100 million.

Looking at Netflix’s all-time Top 10 for original movies, it’s clear that spy thrillers are irresistible to subscribers, with Red Notice, The Gray Man, and both of the Extraction actioners holding a spot, and that’s without even mentioning the recent success found by Heart of Stone. All of that begs the question, though, where is The Union?

The star-studded espionage adventure was acquired by the streaming service in an eight-figure deal in May of 2020, with the cast roping in Mark Wahlberg and Halle Berry as its two leads with coming from J.K. Simmons, Jackie Earle Haley, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, and former Luke Cage Mike Colter to name but a small few.

Shooting took place across Europe between March and September of 2022, with the streaming service’s Upfronts presentation this year listing it among the “Select Films” section that also includes a number of titles to have already premiered including They Cloned Tyrone, Extraction 2, Fair Play, and The Out-Laws. However, we’ve heard nothing since, and there hasn’t been so much as an official image or teaser trailer unveiled as of yet, so it’s almost certain The Union won’t be landing until 2024.

Curiously, that makes it the second Netflix exclusive starring Berry forced to deal with a lengthy waiting game following The Mothership, and it might be a while before we find out when we’ll see the two A-listers “thrust into the world of super spies and secret agents” when Wahlberg’s construction worker is recruited by the Oscar-winner’s high school ex-girlfriend for an intelligence mission.

During the height of the pandemic, Paramount Plus saw an opportunity and took it in an effort to immediately establish itself as a new power player in the streaming wars. It was a sound idea in practice, but the fact Infinite was irredeemably awful didn’t do much to generate new subscribers.

Boasting a proven big budget pairing in director Antoine Fuqua and star Mark Wahlberg, the expensive original sci-fi actioner was intended for a theatrical release before the studio decided to pull it from the big screen and position it as one of its platform’s marquee launch titles, with Infinite premiering as its second-ever original feature and first effects-heavy A-list extravaganza.

Unfortunately, or maybe not considering that was exactly what it deserved, it quickly gained a reputation as one of the year’s worst blockbusters, fizzling out with a 17 percent Rotten Tomatoes score. In a deliciously cruel twist of irony, though, the film has since migrated over to a direct rival and ended up as one of its biggest hits on a global scale.

Per FlixPatrol, the tedious tale of Wahlberg’s blank-faced hero partnering up with a band of constantly-reincarnated mercenaries in an effort to prevent Chiwitel Ejiofor from inhaling so much scenery he destroys the world has debuted at number four on Netflix’s worldwide charts after entering the Top 10 in 49 countries.

Not content with continually being handed slam dunks on a platter from HBO, the company is more than happy to take them from even more rival platforms, too.

Despite starring in what’s quite frankly an astonishing array of terrible movies covering countless genres dating back decades, Mark Wahlberg can be a great dramatic actor in the right project.

His Academy Award-nominated performance in The Departed is arguably the most notable example, but the rapper-turned-thespian has delivered a string of solid turns throughout his career. Unfortunately, his medium of preference happens to be the hard-boiled thriller where he plays a straight-laced and no-nonsense hero, which also tends to be the arena in which he fails the hardest and most often.

Then again, it’s been a while since he appeared in anything that could justifiably be deemed as unanimously praised, and given the repeated controversies to have dogged him across the course of his life both in and out of the public eye, it’s maybe not all that surprising that his hints towards retirement in an interview with Cigar Aficionado have been greeted with open arms by certain corners of social media.

“Well, I’m certainly working harder now than ever. Certain businesses, you kind of build them, them on or you exit. Hopefully my kids, we’ll see what their interests are, but I don’t think that I’ll be acting that much longer at the pace I am now. That’s for sure. Because that’s the most difficult thing.”

It wasn’t even an overtly-veiled threat that he’s planning to step away from his on-camera activities, but even the merest suggestion has inevitably led to some spicy takes crossing their fingers in the hopes the polarizing Wahlberg eventually decides that he’s had enough of being a leading man.

The social media platform formerly known as Twitter, now known as X, has been reacting quite strongly to a particular tweet (or whatever a post is called now) about Mark Wahlberg, sparking a question as to whether or not someone who commits certain crimes as a teenager should still be judged by them decades later.

The debate started rather unintentionally, when a popular praised Mark Wahlberg for “promoting religious values.” Numerous s replied by pointing out his past crimes, believing that such behavior should not be ignored, and thus Wahlberg should not be the recipient of such high-value praise.

This isn’t the first time Wahlberg’s past has come back to haunt him on social media; he received a significant amount of backlash on Instagram in 2020 when he posted about the murder of George Floyd being “heartbreaking.” Some people saw it as hypocritical.

Wahlberg abused illegal substances as a teenager in Boston, telling The Guardian in 2020 that he was addicted to cocaine at age 13. Also in that interview he spoke about one of his past crimes when, in 1988, he assaulted a Vietnamese shopkeeper while calling him racial slurs. It was his second racist attack of the day, having assaulted another Vietnamese man earlier. Both attacks were entirely unprovoked, and no reasons were given by Wahlberg for them other than him explaining that he was high on P and is deeply regretful, adding, “I made a lot of mistakes and I paid for those mistakes dearly.”

That Vietnamese shopkeeper, Johnny Trinh, was a combat veteran who had lost his eye while serving in the South Vietnamese army in 1975 when a grenade exploded near him.

However, it wasn’t the first day in Wahlberg’s life of committing racially-motivated crimes. Two years earlier in 1986 — when Mark was 15 — he and a group of his friends chased three black children while throwing rocks at them and yelling “Kill the n*****s!”

Thankfully, an ambulance driver noticed what was happening, and stopped the chase. However, Wahlberg wasn’t done. He harassed more Black children the next day (none older than 10 years old) and gathered more of his friends to verbally abuse them and throw rocks at them as well. 

When you consider that the attack on the shopkeeper was two years later, then it seems Wahlberg didn’t exactly learn from this at the time. 

In 2014, Wahlberg sought to be pardoned for the second attack, saying that he is “Deeply sorry for the actions I took on the night of April 8, 1988. As well as any lasting damage I may have caused the victims.”

Trinh responded, saying that Wahlberg deserves a second chance, especially considering his actions were when he was “young and reckless.”

However, not everyone agreed. Another one of his victims, Kristyn Atwood — who was one of the children he threw rocks at — did not believe that Wahlberg should be pardoned for his actions, saying, “For him to just want to erase it, I think it’s wrong.”

After that attack, Wahlberg settled the civil case that was brought against him because of his rock-throwing actions. In regards to his assault on the shopkeeper, Wahlberg was charged with attempted murder and felony assault. He pleaded guilty, was sentenced to two years in prison, but was released after just 45 days.  

In 1992 — years after getting out of prison early — Wahlberg attacked his neighbor, Robert Crehan, in what he claims was a reaction to Crehan calling his friend a racial slur. The case was settled out of court.

Despite Wahlberg’s claims that he paid dearly for his mistakes, it appears that he must be referring to social media backlash only, because he served a grand total of 45 days in jail and soon thereafter shot to fame where, if he was going to make it as a celebrity, he best not throw rocks at children.

Also, if his actions against his neighbor are an example of him believing that those who use racial slurs should suffer physical violence against them, then how come he himself has not suffered such penalties?

This is why many people believe that Mark really hasn’t suffered enough, and will likely always carry a not-so-special place in their respective hearts for him. He seems like a good guy now, and maybe he is — except when he rants at a gym for not being open at 3am for him to work out in — so who is anyone else to judge? That being stated, everyone judges, and those judgments against Wahlberg, whether right or not, will likely continue because his past behavior — practically by his own ission — is pretty reprehensible.

In case you’re wondering, Wahlberg was never pardoned. He technically withdrew the petition by no longer pursuing it. Prior to that happening, he was asked about the pardon and said, “Regardless if I’m granted a pardon or not, I will continue to work every day to be a better person.” We hope that’s true, in any case.

George Clooney, in his ever-charismatic way, told quite the hilarious story about trying to convince some of Hollywood’s heavy hitters, including Johnny Depp, to commit to a role in the 2001 film Ocean’s Eleven.

Clooney and director Steven Soderbergh were interviewed by Ben Mankiewicz earlier this week in front of an audience at the Turner Classic Movies Film Festival. One knew it would be a laugh-fest as soon as Clooney took the stage, sat down, and immediately remarked, “We have time for one more question.”

Mankiewicz humorously played along, asking, “What was it like working with Brad Pitt?”

When the conversation about Ocean’s Eleven took off, Clooney regaled the crowd with anecdotes about the stars he courted to the cast. One of Clooney’s success stories involved Julia Roberts, whom he cajoled to appear in he film via a playful sleight-of-hand; as Clooney explained, she was getting $20 million a film at the time, so he sent her a $20 bill, along with a quip that he “heard she was getting 20 a movie.” The joke worked, and she jumped aboard, though for significantly more than $20.

Clooney also mentioned, “Some very famous people told us to fu** right off.”

Following the crowd’s laughter, Clooney added, “We went to their homes and sat with them.”

Mankiewicz chimed in, saying, “That’s the polite way to tell people to fu** off,” and Clooney noted that Mark Wahlberg itted to being one of them. Clooney then named “Johnny Depp,” to everyone’s surprise.

Mankiewicz suggested that these thespians and others likely regret not doing the film, to which Clooney retorted, “I regret doing fu**ing Batman!”

Owen Wilson was also mentioned as someone who turned down an Oceans role. Clooney and Soderbergh playfully discussed a mashup of Soderbergh’s films, Ocean’s Eleven and Magic Mike, calling it “Ocean’s Mike.”

Ocean’s Eleven made $450 million at the box office on a budget of $85 million, and spawned multiple sequels. None of which star Johnny Depp.

We may never see Marshall Bruce Mathers III spearhead a film ever again, and in many ways, we don’t really need to. The controversial, Grammy-winning hip hop artist has likely proved all he needs to prove in that department by way of 8 Mile, and even if the name Eminem has the perennial ability to draw a crowd, it’s simply a difficult task to envision what the rapper’s acting range looks like.

In an alternate timeline, however, we may have gotten a better idea circa 2010, when David O. Russell’s The Fighter – a biopic centered on the early career of welterweight boxing champion Micky Ward – first hit theaters.

Star and producer Mark Wahlberg brought the fighter to life in the film, which would go on to net him a Best Picture nomination at the 83rd Academy Awards, but, according to producer Todd Lieberman in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, there had been some serious early talks about slotting Eminem into the role of Ward, even revealing that the rapper was their first choice.

“The first person that we thought would star in this film was Eminem. Eminem was going to be Micky Ward.”

He would go on to reveal that the extensive momentum of 8 Mile, released in 2002, was chiefly what made the idea possible for both the producers and Eminem himself.

“That was a moment in time where he had come off of 8 Mile, and he was interested in making movies, and he wanted to do a boxing movie. So that was something we pursued for a minute. And there was real life in that for a minute.”

Of course, the role ultimately went to Wahlberg, as previously mentioned, and judging by how competitive the 2011 Oscars ceremony ended up being (competitive for everyone except the The King’s Speech, that is), we doubt the producers look back on that decision with regret.