The Wrecking Crew

Review: A phrase I don’t use lightly is ‘this film would’ve benefitted greatly from The Rock being in it.’ As far as pro wrestler turned actors go, Dave Bautista’s output of work is better than the Johnson’s in term of acting quality, but Johnson is undeniably great at what he does, which is playing The Rock. And The Rock would’ve worked in this movie. A buddy action movie that released directly to Prime, the film stars Bautista and Jason Momoa as estranged brothers looking into the death of their father. It also stars Claes Bang, Temuera Morrison, Jacob Batalon, Frankie Adams, Miyavi, Stephen Root, & Morena Baccarin as various people the brothers encounter during their investigation. The film features a lot of moving dynamics between the many characters, but the 122 minute runtime is enough to justify that. Also I’ll mention that Momoa’s character resides in Oklahoma, so woohoo! OK mention!

High: Even despite the questionable dialogue (see more on that in my Low) Bautista & Momoa are both talented and charming enough to make some aspects of the movie work. The relationship between the brothers worked and if it hadn’t the film would’ve been dead on arrival. And the hand to hand action sequences were actually really good with both actors excelling at this. Some of the bigger action scenes didn’t work as well for me, but the fight choreography on a smaller scale was solid.

Low: The writing was… well… it exists. The dialogue wasn’t great. The jokes didn’t land for me. And the twist was pretty easy to spot. But having it set on Hawai’i and actually incorporating the political state of Hawai’i and some Hawaiian culture was cool so I’ll give it credit for that. Granted, I have no idea who accurate the portrayal of the culture is, so I’m willing to stand corrected.

Rating: 4/10