My first guilty pleasure of 2026, The Wrecking Crew teams Dave Bautista and Jason Mamoa as brothers searching for their father's killers. A snarky blend of lazy comedy and overblown violence, it coasts by on skills of its leads.
Which is fine by me. Bautista has spent years trying to elevate his screen persona, using his MCU credentials to work in franchises like Dune and Knives Out. It's great to see him back to repressed rage.
Mamoa, on the other hand, has been trapped in the DC Universe, with trips to Dune and assorted cartoons. Flamboyant where Bautista seethes, Mamoa in real life seems just as self-centered and hard-to-take as the jerks he plays on screen.
Including Wrecking Crew's Jonny, first seen in Oklahoma losing his girlfriend Valentina (Morena Baccarin). Jonny guzzles beers while punching opponents, picks gratuitous fights that jeopardize his work as a cop, and hits on every female he sees. It's been 20 years since he left his home in Hawaii, and 10 since he's spoken to his brother James (Bautista).
Straitlaced and humorless, James is the kind of guy who trains Navy SEALS by having them black out underwater. He sends for Jonny after he learns that their estranged jerk of a father was killed in a hit-and-run accident.
Simmering resentments between the brothers erupt at a funeral service presided over by Governor Pat Mahoe (Temuera Morrison). Unhappy with police work led by Detective Rennert (Stephen Root), the brothers pursue individual investigations to prove their dad was murdered.
Jonny is threatened by local gangsters before coming across a stringer (Jacob Batalon) his father hired to investigate obnoxious billionaire developer Robichaux (Claes Bang). James meanwhile finds incriminating surveillance video after taking down the owner of a sex shop.
That’s the milieu for The Wrecking Crew: ultra-rich seaside compounds, sordid nightclubs, beaches that could just as well be in New Zealand as Hawaii. Overlit, with bright splashy colors, this film wants to be an 87North knockoff. (David Leitch was once attached to the project.)
Jonathan Tropper's script has dead ends and false clues, as well as an encrypted flash drive with all the answers to the plot. Nothing you haven't seen in scores of buddy action films. Ditto for the action scenes, although they're set on a much larger scale than is typical for the genre.
They're also decidedly R-rated. Jonny's opening salvo against yakuza goons is unexpectedly vicious. A chase between an SUV and a helicopter leads to one bad guy's arm ripped off and another killed by scraping his head on freeway asphalt. A fiery midtown chase blows up scores of civilians.
Bautista and Mamoa operate at different ends of the action spectrum; their styles complement each other effectively, but their interactions aren't very credible. Batalon provides game comic relief, Claes Bang enjoys overacting, and Temuera Morrison barely registers.
I don't care whether Bautista and Mamoa are believable as brothers. I don't care about sloppy plotting or cut-rate visual effects or how Baccarin's character suddenly displays martial arts chops. I want to see the leads destroying bad guys, which is exactly what The Wrecking Crew delivers.
The film premieres Wednesday, January 28, exclusively on Prime Video.