Momoa and Bautista divvy up collateral damage in The Wrecking Crew
Courtesy Amazon MGM Studios
It’s been a big week for Amazon MGM Studios releases, which have decided to pile up at the end of January for some reason. The Chris Pratt A.I. cop movie Mercy is in theaters, where it is about to joined by the $40 million financial crime Melania, and amid the two, Prime Video drops a direct-to-streaming action comedy. It’s an odd set of releases with poor timing for much of the subject matter—now fully eclipsed by an American protest movement that probably has little interest in coming home from a rally to watch the misadventures of heroic law enforcement.
Luckily, there’s almost no need to fire an electron between brain cells to get the most from your time with The Wrecking Crew.
Two estranged half-brothers, Jason Momoa and Dave Bautista, are forced to reunite after their father’s mysterious death. [We’re just going to use the actors’ names—these are not characters, these are costumes.] Bautista is a family man who still occupies the family’s turf in Hawaii, while Momoa has become a cop in Oklahoma. After a break-up, his Oklahoma home is invaded by Yakuza ninja warriors who think he has a secret package from his dead dad. Yes, we’ve got Momoa doing sleight-of-hand murder magic on a screaming battle clan right outta the gate, so are cooking with some gas tonight.
“Momoa/Bautista are anger issue brothers” is about as straightforward of an action comedy pitch as you can get. The film runs with that in the same beat-for-beat you can probably picture in your head without me having to spell it out. No one has to tell you what happens in a Godzilla vs. Kong type of film; you’re already there, you know what this rodeo is. These bros alternate between punching guys outta buildings that explode, then dredging up family trauma as minor emotional revelations, then blowing up some cars this time. And that’s fine! That’s what I signed up for! So does the flick bring any flourish to the table?
Unfortunately, no. Which is a shame. The trailer does a great job of selling a much funnier, banter-based adventure. These are two actors who have repeatedly brought new life to tired franchise films by having pithy little asides amid smashing skulls. The team-up should be a no-brainer. But anything interesting, fun, or loose that may have existed around this script/production is sanded down into the same flat format that you’d expect from a Wahlberg Netflix outing. Just like Netflix’s modern mandate, this has the unfortunate structure and repetition that extends beyond genre tropes and into “We know you’re looking at your phone while you ‘watch’ this, that’s why we keep repeating this.” We are hurtling towards an era of having to judge these outings by different standards, determined by if they were made with streaming in mind as their prime destination, or with the intent of a theatrical run.
By that lowered bar, Wrecking Crew does have plenty of (relatively) stellar segments. The very small hand-to-hand fight scenes are electric—as watching these guys plow through walls and snap necks is never not pure cinema. Some of the larger set-pieces are exceptionally structured. Unfortunately, this creates a weird gap where the scenes with subpar CGI really stick out. Only two are truly distracting, but those two are enough to make you wonder what the budget for reshoots looked like.
If anything about the movie sticks with me, it might be some choices around these bigger city scenes. Wrecking Crew goes out of its way to really rack up collateral damage. A sequence involving a helicopter chasing a car down the highway results in dozens upon dozens of random pedestrians and families getting blown to bits or thrown through the air in exploding vehicles. No one ever acknowledges this, and it is unintentionally delightful to see these two A-list actors bicker over who has the hotter girlfriend while shouting “SO MANY PEOPLE JUST DIED!” at your television. Top tier entertainemt; no notes.
A carousel of too many characters pulls the flick down, as does a bizarre inclination towards racial jokes and stereotypes in a film where the other biggest critique is probably the inability to infuse Hawaii itself into the story. That could all be its own separate deep dive, so we’ll put it aside, and instead just briefly hit on the strangest imbalance in the film: division of labor. Momoa and Bautista’s equal billing and producer credits aside, would lead one to expect a pretty equal divvy-up of the scenes and stunts, but a distracting amount of the film is Momoa alone. I’m not sure what happened here, but Bautista is given less to do in a film framed (from the outset) as being from his own perspective. There is, obviously, no rule in the rulebook that says Kong and Godzilla need equal screentime… except that there is, elsewhere, in the same films that these actors travel in.
Wrecking Crew has two-thirds of what it needs to be an action film franchise launching pad, but the cookie-cutter characters and long plot lulls drag down an otherwise excellent set of individual battle sequences. Honestly, now that we’re done having to explain the backstory of two dudes that didn’t need a backstory, the second and third films in the franchise could loosen up and be something really worth… looking up from your phone to catch.
The Wrecking Crew is on Prime Video starting Jan. 28, 2026.
