Amazon Prime recently released a new movie titled “Wrecking Crew” starring Jason Momoa and Dave Bautista. Most of the movie takes place in Hawaii with a few scenes in Oklahoma. The movie is hilarious if you can handle violence and explicit language. 5/5 stars for me.
The movie is described as a buddy cop action comedy film in terms of genre but just feels more like an action comedy. Momoa’s character may technically be a cop, but that is not particularly relevant. Neither is Bautista’s role being a higher up in the Navy. The only part of their characters’ careers that were relevant was the martial and weapons training they received from it, making each of them able to easily take on their attackers in hand to hand.
The secondary villain is introduced early in the movie when Momoa’s character Jonny Hale is attacked in his own home, while using the restroom no less, by a couple of Yakuza thugs looking for some mysterious package from his long-estranged father. He was joking around the whole time he was beating the stuffing out of these thugs until one of them messed with the shrine he had for his late mother. After that, the joking immediately stopped and was followed by utter rage and brutality. To top the whole thing off, he was drunk and drinking through the whole fight because his girlfriend had just left him earlier that day.
Dave Bautista plays Momoa’s older half-brother, US Navy Seal James Hale. He is a very serious character who has a loving family. Already, the two men were vastly different from each other, but then their father Walter Hale is killing in a hit and run so they must tolerate each other long enough to figure out who killed their father.
They are both Native Hawaiian, and as such have a fierce loyalty to their island and culture. The island and their culture are in trouble with the arrival of Claes Bang as Marcus Robichaux looking to develop a part of the island where a large community of native Hawaiians are, with mentions of a casino. Gambling is outlawed in Hawaii, so any mention of a casino or gambling is shocking to them.
Jason Momoa has had a lot of serious roles in his career, and while that excludes his recent role as Garrett “The Garbage Man” Garrison in the Minecraft Movie, this role was something else. Not to mention how different Dave Bautista’s recent role of Drax from “Guardians of the Galaxy” is from his character in this movie.
Whoever wrote the dialogue of the two brothers bickering with each other and even their small interactions together are spot on for how brothers act and talk. Down to them exchanging blows at one point. One set of dialogue perfectly encapsulates it. James asked if Jonny ever shut up; Jonny replied with the very mature reply of farting sounds. James got the last word when he asked his brother, “What do you charge to not talk?” Perfect capturing of a brotherly moment. There were some parts of the dialogue that could be included as the movie has an R rating for a reason. Not only because of the vivid on-screen violence, but the dialogue is very explicit.