3/12 ForReel Score | 1.5/5 Stars

The Wrecking Crew opens with drone shots of Hawaii scored to Guns N’ Rose Paradise City. Hardly an original needle drop but one that advertises the exact movie that Jason Momoa and Dave Bautista think they’re selling to you. A gruff buddy action comedy inspired by the likes of Tango and Cash and Lethal Weapon. There’s just one problem. Somewhere along the way, the sensibility of the filmmakers who are now scoring these types of B-Movie throwback gigs changed. Director Angel Manuel Soto’s last film was the surprisingly strong low rent superhero outing Blue Beetle. It turns out he was the perfect choice for that film because his frame of reference is other comic book movies. In actuality, The Wrecking Crew’s main point of reference is Deadpool. CGI ridden hyperviolence hellbent on proving how gory it can be. Crass insult humor that verges on being meta. Morena Baccarin as a love interest. That may still work for some audiences in search of a brain dead stream but to me this is one of the most tiring superhero fan fictions we’ve ever been subjected to. Strap in: you never know what Drax and the guy who almost got cast as Drax are going to say next.

The story follows half brothers James (Bautista) and Jonny (Momoa) Hale as they reunite after many years for their father Walter’s funeral following a hit and run. James is a stoic and family driven Navy SEAL. Jonny is a sloppy reservation cop who just got dumped by his girlfriend Valentina (Baccarin). They hate each other’s guts, immediately hurling insults instead of grieving. Jonny is certain that there’s more to Walter’s death than meets the eye because he was attacked by Yakuza gang members shortly before leaving. He’s also torn up about never finding those who killed his mother years prior. James is more reluctant but after a tedious period of them casing things out separately gets on board. From there, the two take on a generic grab bag of gangsters, corrupt moguls and politicians in pursuit of the truth.

Our central dynamic is irritating. There’s no actual grit or passion to this family conflict. These two just need an excuse to hurl endless variations of “you look like X fucked Y” at each other for half the movie. The pop culture references are constant and exhausting. Why do these allegedly salt of the earth tough guys speak like TMZ interns? (Not surprising SPOILER ALERT ahead…) Once they become friends again it switches from that to them talking about how “spicy” Baccarin is and a bunch of other mildly un-PC things that are clearly supposed to make you say “wow, they went there.” Dave Bautista is the stronger of the two. He clearly thinks that this is his first legitimate action vehicle and he does try to ground James in some mildly sincere emotion. Momoa is on autopilot. He’s trying so hard to convince us that he’s this loose canon wildcard but it’s just the same snarling and yelling we’ve seen him do a hundred times. He’s certainly the more physical one in the action sequences but is so consistently annoying that it is hard to appreciate his work there.

The best buddy action movies are rooted in agitation that stems from a sincere and long lasting relationship. In Bad Boys, Marcus’ love for Mike is often overshadowed by genuine fear of him. Their back and forth has emotional weight because we know that no matter how annoyed they are with one another it is still “Bad Boys For Life.” James and Jonny shouldn’t have spent the first three quarters of this movie estranged. It manufactures tension mostly to set up bad jokes, since there’s really only one emotional outpouring between them. Had they began the film as a deeply bonded pair of brothers, we would’ve gotten more naturalistic arguments that would’ve dug deeper into who these men are. These human moments are also funnier, since they’re more revealing and vulnerable. The Wrecking Crew is manufactured by Amazon and the respective PR teams of Momoa and Bautista with the sole purpose of making them seem cool and it fails at every turn.

After a mildly exciting close quarters brawl in Momoa’s apartment, Angel Manuel Soto totally loses the plot on his action sequences. Most of the more extravagant scenes are draped in painfully cheap streaming movie CGI that removes any sense of danger. At one point, two cars are corkscrewing each other while Momoa and his aggressor shoot at each other, but it’s so plain to see that both men are leaning out of the car against a green screen, trying very hard to look cool. Even worse is the pre-climax car chase where motorcycle gangsters climb into their van and they proceed to have the exact same backseat brawl that Deadpool opened with while barely rendered car crashes and explosions go off in the background. The more physical ones are derivative. The apartment fight is a wannabe Indonesian action. Dave Bautista takes on some goons in an Oldboy style wide. The brothers have a lengthy fistfight in the rain pulled straight out of They Live. Unoriginal and poorly executed.

I’m not convinced that any of these image obsessed guys that rose to stardom in the unambitious 2010’s superhero/Fast and Furious era are built for this kind of movie. In order to make a great action movie, the stars have to be willing to make themselves look a little dirty. Not in a goofy “isn’t he such a card” way. In a way that makes the audience a little bit fearful of what is behind their eyes. The Wrecking Crew is a brand extension. Momoa and Bautista expressed in the press that they were looking for a script like this. Some boiler plate spec script by Jonathan Tropper was dug out of a vault and then the powers that be pooled just enough money in for it to make the Amazon Prime homepage. That corporate structure will never produce an action film that feels dangerous, which is the entire point.

Movie Review: Dave Bautista and Jason Momoa Are Painfully Uncool in “The Wrecking Crew”