Mark Wahlberg and Halle Berry break down “The Union”'s high-stakes final sequence

From the big stunts to their hilarious banter, the stars and director Julian Farino break down the exhilarating final act.

Warning: This article contains spoilers from The Union.

Mark Wahlberg and Halle Berry's new action-comedy The Union finishes with a bang.

Directed by Julian Farino, the comedic spy film follows construction worker Mike (Wahlberg) as his high school girlfriend Roxanne (Berry) pulls him into her world of espionage as a member of an elite team known as The Union. After being betrayed by Roxanne's estranged husband Nick (Mike Colter), the former childhood couple goes to scenic Istria to stop him from selling top-secret intel to the highest bidder. The Union's massive final sequence combines all the elements that make the film work — beautiful locations, lots of banter, high-octane fight sequences, thrilling car chases — with a satisfying final showdown.

The stars had a blast filming in Slovenia and Croatia to bring the complex sequence to life. "We had such a cool time with the big set pieces. The winding roads, the dirt roads, the paved roads. Driving the car in these small villages along the sea and beautiful settings," Colter tells Entertainment Weekly. It took 450 crew members and several weeks to capture the footage that makes up the incredible sequence.

EW spoke to director Farino and stars Berry, Wahlberg, and Colter to learn more about the film's action-packed, banter-filled finish.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: This sequence has a lot going: fights, a car chase, jokes, and emotional beats. How did you balance all of that?

JULIAN FARINO: I tried to make sure that the action included character engagement, which was my take on the whole movie. The action would be more interesting if it had not just thrills, but also a chance for the characters to function with the story.

At that stage of the story I wanted the audience to really feel that Mark and Halle were a great double act because we'd seen them with a great imbalance of their talents early on in the story. It's a meeting place for me of Halle's emotional journey meeting Mark's evolution as an operative in the field as they rediscover each other. By this stage of the story, they're functioning quite well together. They've had an emotional high point in the plane before the end action sequence, which is the calm before the storm.

Related: Halle Berry says she's broken 10 bones and 'been knocked out 3 times' filming action movies

Halle, how does Roxanne's reunion with Mike change her?

HALLE BERRY: She was charged with a really big task and that was finding someone that she could trust. That was her assignment so going back and having to find her high school love, she knew she could trust him, but I don't think she was prepared to have those feelings resurge in her. She struggled with those feelings along the way, and then at some point, it became undeniable that there was still a thing between them.

MARK WAHLBERG: Mike was willing to do anything. He was an open book, completely open, and she has a tough exterior. He had a lot of chipping away to do.

Speaking of Mike's journey to trained operative, he has that fight scene on the rooftop.

FARINO: Yes, I wanted to do something on the rooftops because it was very visual, and you could see the sea, and you could imagine good chase things happening there.

WAHLBERG: Oh, I didn't like it all. I never really was bothered by heights. I don't know, I felt a little queasy. All the jumping, running, and all that stuff, but we certainly had fun. And [Halle] giving me s--- the whole time keeps me a little more motivated and committed to doing a little bit more myself as opposed to letting the doubles jump in there.

FARINO: The specific sequence where they fall down the side of the roof that ends up with a bit of gunplay was based around seeing them at the peak of dependence on each other. I wanted to feel them coming together and having each other's backs. Mark went up on the high balance of the rooftop, and Halle has an amazing ability to learn choreography of fights very, very quickly.

The car chase as Mike and Roxanne hunt Nick is also a long and complicated sequence. How did you all pull that off?

FARINO: We staked a lot on the car chase and that's quite an ambitious thing to do because they aren't easy. It took a few weeks to shoot, so the car chase is very painstaking. The amount of angles and the amount of coverage you need and all of that. It's quite lengthy and the only reason that I could sustain it is because there were a couple of devices within it which enabled the banter between Mark and Halle to carry on.

COLTER: There's such cool technology now. The stunt drivers are actually sitting on top of the cars driving for us while we're reacting to it. I got a chance to drive the Porsche a bit and do my own stuff, but we have a very sophisticated stunt team that's just top-notch. I had such a great time doing that. I was like a kid in a candy store.

FARINO: I tried in the whole movie to not be dependent on CGI, so there's very little in the movie. Like the chase out of the town that's waterside with Mark getting attached to the machine gunner on the motorbike. That was done because the stunt coordinator told me that he could have Mark dive onto the car and could get a substantial amount of time with Mark clinging on for dear life as a stunt. Mark and Halle, thankfully, were very willing to do their own stunts wherever possible, so they were actually inside the cars with stunt drivers driving on the roof. They experienced the twists and turns and danger for real. I didn't want it to be something where you see amazing stunt work in the field and then cut to what is clearly a studio shot with reaction shots from inside the car because audiences can see that these days.

BERRY: For me, it was just fun to drive at those speeds. I wasn't really driving, but to be in those cars, doing all of that and saying all of our lines. It was fun. Those are the moments when I think, thank God, this is my job because it's just sheer fun.

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Speaking of Halle and Mark's banter, one spot where they were able to do that is when Mike was trapped in the trunk of a car during the chase.

Farino: It was Joe Barton's, the writer, idea to get Mark in the boot of the car because that enabled us to have banter. For me, one of the great character moments I loved in the script and I liked doing it was we had this massive chase and he finally kicks the other guy out of the car and rather than just keep on driving, he takes a moment of comic vengeance shall we say when he boots the guy.

Wahlberg: We want to try to infuse as much comedy as possible along the way. That humor is something I could relate to and I know Halle could as well. We trying to play that up as much as possible, but [the trunk] was not fun at all to shoot. Very uncomfortable. I'm old, cramped and a grumpy old man.

Berry: Doing it with Mark. I mean nobody does it better. I've seen Daddy's home so many freaking times. That's his thing. Mark is going to make you laugh. He's so relatable. I got to really learn from watching how effortlessly and seamlessly this stuff just falls out of his mouth.

Related: Mark Wahlberg still has his prosthetic penis from Boogie Nights — here's where he keeps it

The sequence ends with Roxanne taking down her husband. What made Mike Colter the right choice to play their adversary?

FARINO: What I liked best about Mike as an adversary was that he has a personal involvement in the story so there are emotional stakes rather than just a Bond-type villain. As for Mike himself, we needed someone who was a match for Mark, someone who would add spice to the love story, so obviously Mike's good looks and incredible athleticism were an asset.

What was shooting Nick's death scene like?

COLTER: He sort of made his bed. He's a lion and had a moment where he could have decided to do something else, but he decided had this opportunity to further his own agenda. At the end of the film, the only thing standing between him and this beautiful life he thought he was going to share with Roxanne is Roxanne. He's just looking at it like, "Am I going to spend the rest of my life in a 10x6 cell or am I going to make a run for it? Are you going to stop me?"

BERRY: When we dropped him in the river? That was fun. I was over him by that point. Mike was a wonderful actor, and we had fun, but in the movie, shooting Nick was easy work. Easy work.

The Union is out now on Netflix.

Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly.