RIOTUS

DrewNote: two estranged half-brothers must overcome old hurts to solve the mystery of their father’s murder… if they can live that long.

An older man is pursued through the back alleys of Honolulu. He drops a package into a mailbox and is then run over by a van, whose driver merely confirms he’s dead. And thus begins The Wrecking Crew, a buddy cop action-comedy directed by Angel Manuel Soto and written by Jonathan Tropper.

James Hale (Dave Bautista) is a tough-as-nails Navy SEAL instructor, happily married with kids. Told of his father Walter’s murder, James is impassive; Walter was a poor father and James doesn’t miss him, but will go to his funeral. His wife calls James’ half-brother Johnny (Jason Momoa), a cop working on an Oklahoma reservation, to invite him but Johnny hates Walter more than James does–about as much as he hates James, actually–and refuses. With his girlfriend Valentina (Morena Baccarin) having just left him, he’s hit a real low–until Yakuza assassins show up asking about a package Walter mailed him.

One fight and flight later, Johnny is back in Hawaii, where he promptly runs afoul of the local crimeboss. He’s given seven days to get out of Hawaii and never return–so the clock is running. They have emotional support from Governor Monoe (Temuera Morrison), a family friend, but they need more help than that once uncomfortable truths begin to surface. At first the two brothers assume Walter, a low-end private eye, was the victim of a hit-and-run; that’s what Honolulu police detective Rennert (Stephen Root) tells them. It’s not long before proof of foul play turns up, and when the two are joined by Walter’s foul-mouthed employee Pika (Jacob Batalon), things kick into high gear.

What follows is a chase to track down a missing flash drive and blueprints for a casino, plus figuring out who really hired Walter. At the heart of it seems to be Mr. Robichaux (Claes Bang) whose real estate interests have pulled in some foreign investors… but what’s the real story here? Who killed Walter and why? And why are they now gunning for the two feuding brothers?

With a few neat twists and turns, Wrecking Crew moves at a steadily building pace until the ending is a breakneck run-and-gun fight through a luxury mansion, with a few loose ends to be snipped in a laid-back wrapup.

The movie’s real strength is the chemistry between Bautista and Momoa. They’re given plenty of heavy emotional scenes to play but also get to indulge their well-known knack for verbal and physical comedy. Honestly, there could easily be a franchise built around these two, or at least a string of movies that put them together in different ways.

Soto stages his fight scenes with great economy, never too dark to tell what’s going on and never too quickly cut. It’s a fine line to walk when the action is as varied as it is here. Tropper’s script veers between the expected and the unexpected, making excellent use of Hawaii as a setting and a superb cast.

If you like heavy-hitting action movies with a solid emotional subtext, The Wrecking Crew might be for you.