The Wrecking Crew Review

After 20 years away, the suspicious death of his estranged father draws Oklahoma cop Jonny Hale (Jason Momoa) back home to Hawaii. Upon returning, Jonny is reunited with his Navy Seal brother, James (Dave Bautista), and together they begin looking into what might have got their father killed. Now it’s just a question of who they kill first; the bad guys, or each other.

Far from reinventing the wheel, The Wrecking Crew is exactly what you might expect. Two hours of pure chaotic super-cheese. Big, ridiculous action sequences, intertwined with an unsurprisingly predictable plot. And if that doesn’t sound like fun, the pairing of Jason Momoa and Dave Bautista certainly should. Together, they turn what would normally be a pretty standard affair into something bonkers. Watching these two larger-than-life actors bounce off each other – sometimes literally – as their characters bicker their way through every fist fight, car chase and conversation, while trying to find their father’s killer, is rather hilarious. What’s more, the pair actually bring some genuine emotion to their brotherly relationship – not just anger – as the two brothers reconnect. And it certainly helps that the movie more than lives up to its name, in that almost everything in their path gets destroyed.

Backing up our bickering hero brothers is Jacob Batalon’s ‘Pika’. Batalon is once again playing “the guy in the chair”, although without the nerdy excitement of his character from the Spider-Man movies. But thankfully, he still manages to get a laugh or two. Often as the guy attempting to wrangle the brothers. This amusing relationship goes some way to making up for a rather weak villain. Despite his best efforts, there is nothing Claes Bang can do to make this very British rich guy interesting. In fact, he might as well be absent until the very end, mentioned only in hush tones up until that point. The same can be said of Temuera Morrison, who is wasted in a thankless and predictable role. Unlike the increasingly flamboyant Yakuza boss played with real gusto by Miyavi.

Still, with a somewhat absentee villain, there’s more time to enjoy watching Jonny and James make a mess on their path to retribution, and what a mess they make! Every action sequence is delightfully OTT – big, loud and insane seems to have been the brief. Director Ángel Manuel Soto even manages to find some amusing ways for our boys to dispatch the many henchmen sent their way. Just what you want from such a popcorn flick. An early fight between Jonny and some Yakuza gentlemen being a particularly amusing example. But the real highlight is a delightfully fast-paced and destructive helicopter/car chase down one of Hawaii’s major highways, in which no car is safe, and an amusingly horrible death awaits many of the bad guys involved. There’s something appropriately Deadpool-esque to this sequence, and not because of the mildly sub-par CGI. No, it has more to do with the fact that Jonny’s ex-girlfriend, Valentina (played by Morena Baccarin), is behind the wheel.

However, this also happens to be where the movie falls down. Yet again Morena Baccarin is under utilised – an annoyingly consistent faux pas of the Deadpool movies. She has excellent chemistry with Momoa, and has no trouble playing an absolute badass. So much so that she gives Bautista a run for his money when it comes to the bickering, and Jonny certainly seems to have a lot more fun when it’s Valentina giving him the verbal beat down. Making it all the more disappointing that a welcome member of this whacky crew doesn’t have a bigger role to play – as the trailer suggests.