The Wrecking Crew stars Jason Momoa and Dave Bautista as two brothers who slaughter their way across Hawaii in pursuit of revenge against the man who killed their father. The movie is blood-soaked and violent. It also contains plenty of crude language, sexual references and nudity.
Walter Hale. Dead in Honolulu, Hawaii. A hit-and-run.
That’s what the police told Walter’s son James, at least. As for Walter’s other son, Jonny, he begins to suspect that a fouler scheme is at play—particularly when a Yakuza puts a blade to his throat.
Jonny hasn’t seen Walter or James in at least a decade. His father and half-brother abandoned him, forcing Jonny to move from Hawaii to Oklahoma to escape the Syndicate, a group of thugs that operates in Honolulu (and that probably killed his mom).
But then a Yakuza burst into Jonny’s Oklahoma home, demanding to know where the package Walter sent him is. Jonny genuinely doesn’t know—and he doesn’t want any trouble—but he’s also not above exercising Oklahoma’s “stand your ground” law and beating the members of the Japanese mafia to death.
So now Jonny has a reason to fly back to Hawaii: to attend his estranged father’s funeral and to investigate the man’s death.
It’s a cold reunion between Jonny and James—made even more uncomfortable when the Syndicate threatens Jonny, telling him to leave the island in the next week lest they kill him.
As Jonny starts to look for clues, both brothers discover enough deadly heat to warm their cold relationship right back up.
The Wrecking Crew is your standard buddy-comedy action flick featuring two brothers who repair their relationship, albeit through deadly circumstances.
People risk their lives to save others.
Jonny has a shrine honoring his deceased mother inside his home. There’s a reference to astrology. A man commends Jonny for coming to Hawaii to bring his “father’s spirit to rest.”
Jonny meets someone who took extortion photos of a man and woman having sex. The images show the couple in the act, with the woman’s rear and breast partially visible. Elsewhere, we see a man’s naked rear. A man walks onscreen in his underwear after swimming.
Some Yakuza catch Jonny while he’s in the bathroom. They flip him around and realize his genitals (kept offscreen) are exposed. He notes the blade at his throat and wiggles his hips, “challenging” the man to a “swordfight.” Later, he shakes his privates (still offscreen) at the men in mockery.
Jonny is approached by a prostitute wearing an outfit that accentuates her breasts. She invites Jonny to join her in a private room for sex, but Jonny turns her down.
James enters a sex shop, hoping to view footage from the store’s security cameras. A poster for the shop uses a trombone to make a lewd image of a man and woman. We see the store’s phallic-shaped merchandise and lingerie. The male cashier wears nipple tassels connected by a chain. James downloads the store’s recordings onto a USB, which looks like male genitals.
Some women wear outfits that accentuate cleavage. Several men are shirtless throughout the film. James’ wife asks him if he’s attempting to flirt his way into her pants. He and his wife kiss. Jonny kisses his own girlfriend.
A song’s lyrics describe a man looking to find a woman with whom he can have sex. A man admits to being aroused. There are references to male and female genitalia, sperm donations and semen. James says his brother is “dressed like a gorilla at a gay bar.” A man taunts Jonny, saying that Jonny should perform oral sex on him.
Plenty of people die before the movie’s end, often in large displays of blood. Rather than describe every detail, we’ll just point out some of the most cringeworthy moments.
The first action scene includes Jonny fighting against a trio of Yakuza attackers with his fists as he dodges their swords and gunshots. He uses a cheese grater to skin a man’s arm, and he forces someone’s open jaw onto a counter, slamming down on the man’s head to break the teeth from his mouth. He drags one attacker’s neck back and forth across the broken glass of a window, killing him.
In another instance, one of the brothers holds a man out of a speeding vehicle against a concrete guardrail until the friction tears off the man’s arm. The other brother holds a helmeted man’s head to the road as they drive. Before we see the carnage of this action, the guy falls out of the van and is hit by oncoming traffic.
James and Jonny stab, shoot and strangle their way through dozens of adversaries—blood often staining their surroundings as a result. In one scene, James slaughters more than a dozen attackers at once, beating the last man to death with a hammer. And we see people sliced and diced with other weapons, too.
We see the bodies of a drowned man and someone who was burned to death. People die in explosions. Jonny stumbles across the bloodied corpse of a woman, apparently thrown to her death from a tall building.
Plenty of innocents lose their lives as they’re caught in the crossfire. A helicopter mows down families driving on the highway in an attempt to kill the brothers, for instance. Cars crash in dramatic fashion, often exploding as well. A helicopter crashes.
James tears a man’s nipple piercings from his chest. Someone scratches a mark into a man’s neck to leave a scar. We see severed fingers resting on a man’s desk (the owner had just been tortured). Someone takes a hook to the shoulder.
We hear the f-word used somewhere around 160 times, including some instances preceded by “mother.” The s-word is used nearly 60 times. Pretty much every crude way to refer to male and female genitalia is heard at some point. We also hear uses of “a–,” “b–tard,” “b–ch,” “d–n,” “h—” and “p-ss.”
God’s name is used in vain more than 20 times, including five instances paired with “d–n.” Jesus’ name is likewise used in vain three times. Some Hawaiian-language crudities are uttered, too. A woman uses a derogatory word for white people, and some men use the term “spicy” to refer to someone who is Latina.
A man snorts cocaine. There’s a reference to meth. A background song talks about smoking marijuana. Someone roofies a man. People drink liquor and beer.
Jonny is frequently looking around for beer to drink. He’s inebriated once.
Jonny urinates, and when he’s interrupted by Yakuza, he urinates on the men.
The Wrecking Crew is about what you’d expect from a movie starring Jason Momoa and Dave Bautista—that is, it’s an action buddy comedy where they spend the movie throwing their fists at everything that comes their way until they finally realize they need to punch through the hardened shells around their own hearts and reconnect.
The Wrecking Crew is also a revenge flick, premised on the two brothers tearing across Hawaii in an attempt to find and kill the man who orchestrated their father’s murder. Granted, neither of them had much of a relationship with their dad, but as Vin Diesel might say, “Family is family.”
The main thrust of the movie is pure, unadulterated action, with few morals or lessons to be learned. Given that the protagonists engage in firefights that directly cause a bunch of innocent bystanders to die, I wondered if the movie might be preparing some message about how the pursuit of revenge does more damage than good. But no such luck. Who knows? Maybe if there’s a sequel, it will follow a relative of one of those innocents in their pursuit of revenge on the brothers?
The Wrecking Crew also makes victims of Plugged In’s content sections, too: Violence is frequent, graphic and bloody; sexual banter and nudity are present; heavy drug use is depicted; and though Hawaiians might use ‘aloha’ to say hello and goodbye, it’s not unfair to say that Momoa and Bautista use the f-word to accomplish the same.
Kennedy Unthank studied journalism at the University of Missouri. He knew he wanted to write for a living when he won a contest for “best fantasy story” while in the 4th grade. What he didn’t know at the time, however, was that he was the only person to submit a story. Regardless, the seed was planted. Kennedy collects and plays board games in his free time, and he loves to talk about biblical apologetics. He’s also an avid cook. He thinks the ending of Lost “wasn’t that bad.”
