Eschewing a theatrical release in favor of an Amazon Prime debut, "The Wrecking Crew" asks audiences to suspend their disbelief so many times- not just in the way it depicts a helicopter crashing into a bridge, but in how we're supposed to accept that Dave Bautista and Jason Momoa could be brothers. Well, estranged half-brothers, to be more specific, but that doesn't help make them look any less related.
As the film opens, we see Walter Hale (Brian L. Keaulana) being followed in a crowded Hawaiian street. Knowing he's being tailed, he quickly makes his way to a mailbox, rushing to drop off something before he's killed in a seemingly accidental hit-and-run. Of course, in a movie called "The Wrecking Crew," the cops find it totally normal that the street cameras were not functioning that night and there were no witnesses. The local police must have never seen a movie before.
As a private detective, Walter wasn't too good a father through the years, so much so that when his son James (Bautista) is called to identify the body, he doesn't want to let his forsaken sibling Jonny (Jason Momoa) know. It's probably for the best: where as James is a tough-as-nails Navy officer, Jonny is a drunk cop, suspended (with pay, much to his own surprise) for excessive force. He's invited and initially declines to attend the funeral, but after the Yakuza attacks him at his home in Oklahoma, looking for a mysterious package, he decides something doesn't smell right. Could be that he used a cheese grater to shred the skin off of one of the assailants, I can only imagine how long it'd take to get that odor out.
James and Jonny are quick to exchange insults, a common element throughout the runtime, but Jonathan Tropper's script seems to mistake four-letter words as clever retorts; by the third dozen or so f-word, it stopped being cute and ended up a distraction. There isn't a single line of creative dialogue- places where someone like Arnold Schwarzenegger would quip like "let off some steam" or something, has been replaced with heavy sighs, burps and expletives. The sacred art of dumb action movie screenwriting is a lost one, apparently.
A buddy-cop genre picture needs two contrasting heroes, and despite having two towering lumps of muscle, to the actors' credit, they are quite different here. Momoa is a slob, his hair looking like it only gets washed when it rains. He's kind of unhinged, unlike the up-tight Dave, who lumbers about with all the physical grace of a late-era Sylvester Stallone.
The local police sergeant (Stephen Root) is dismissive of the two meat-heads unfounded accusations of some larger conspiracy, which of course there is one. This means the two must learn to put aside their differences and stop the boilerplate plot that involves everything from legalizing casinos, the Hawaiian home lands, corrupt property developers and corrupt politicians (and of course the Yakuza); "Double Impact" crossed with "Moana," if you will.
The production values are quite high here, which helps elevate this well-worn material. Director Ángel Manuel Soto has a sure hand behind the camera, which helps keep the 122 minute length feeling shorter with a good number of action set-pieces. The hand-to-hand combat is a particular highlight. It is frequent, creative and well-shot: you always can tell who is punching who and from where, set in locations from a bathroom to a kitchen to a long hallway to a boat dock. I liked it, even if the film never explains why the two brothers know how to fight like this. Isn't Jonny just some disgraced cop? And what of James? Just because he's in the Navy? What is he, one of the Village People? I gotta calm down, here.
There is some shoddy CGI, sadly, one extended chase involving a minivan and a chopper looks unfinished, with characters flailing about without the weight of a real person. Having the scene take place at night, so the not-so-special effects would be obscured a bit would have been a wiser choice than the bright, sunny middle-of-the-day the filmmakers went with. Oh well.
"The Wrecking Crew" isn't great, but I didn't hate it. Bautista and Momoa almost have chemistry, and considering neither of them have been able to strike it rich with a movie that isn't part of a larger franchise, mashing the two together could have been a whole lot worse.
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