“The Wrecking Crew”, which was released on Amazon Prime in last week, is a generic buddy cop action flick spiced with some local flavor. While it has some personality besides being supported well by its two seasoned lead performers, the movie is conventional and predictable to the core, and I simply followed the story and characters with a mild degree of interest and amusement during my viewing.

The two seasoned lead performers of the film are Jason Momoa and Dave Bautista, who also participated in the productions as co-producers. They play Jonny and James Hale, two estranged Hawaiian brothers who come to investigate together on what happened to their recently murdered father, a seedy private investigator who turns out to be onto something big and serious before he got killed during the opening scene.

When he hears the news of his father’s death, Jonny, who is a US Navy SEAL soldier working in Hawaii, is not particularly sad, and neither is James, who left Hawaii some years ago and has worked as a cop in some Native American reservation area in Oklahoma. However, Jonny begins to sense something suspicious about their father’s death, and so do James, after he is suddenly attacked by a trio of Japanese mafia gangs who want to get something his father sent him right before his death.

Although the mood is certainly awkward between Jonny and James when they meet each other again at the following funeral of their father, both of them become more interested in investigating their father’s death as observing who come to the funeral. Besides the governor of Hawaii who is incidentally a close relative of their family, there also come a bunch of local criminals, who may know why Jonny and James’ father was killed.

Of course, it does not take much time for us to have a pretty good idea about the answer. Right from when the movie introduces a certain big company which is going to build a lot of hotels in Hawaii, we can instantly discern that the company and its rich and powerful owner are involved with the case, and we are not so surprised to see later that the governor has been closely connected with this wealthy person in question (Is this a spoiler?). Furthermore, there are also a group of Japanese mafia gangs eager to eliminate Jonny and James, and that naturally leads to a couple of big action sequences filled with lots of bangs and crashes.

Needless to say, Jonny and James keep clashing with each other due to their old personal resentment toward each other, but we all know too well that 1) they will eventually let out all of their anger and resentment as punching and kicking each other a lot, 2) they are reminded again that they are still, well, brothers, and 3) they subsequently stick together more when their main opponent goes further for eliminating a certain incriminating piece of evidence.

While the screenplay by Jonathan Tropper faithfully follows every footstep of many senior buddy cop action flicks out there such as, yes, “Lethal Weapon” (1987), director Ángel Manuel Soto, who previously directed “Charm Street Kings” (2020) and “Blue Beetle” (2023), competently mixes action and comedy along the story. In case of the busy action sequence unfolded along a highway, we are expectedly served with a fair amount of fun and excitement as lots of things happen on the screen, and you may forgive its rather unrealistic digital special effects for a while at least.

In case of the two lead actors of the film, they easily slip into their respective roles, and they certainly look believable in its action scenes as expected. While Momoa, who has shown more of his potential since “Aquaman” (2018), has a lot of fun with his character’s edgy aspects, Bautista, who looks leaner than before but remains as engaging as he was in several various films ranging from “Guardians of the Galaxy” (2014) to “Dune” (2021), is an effective straight counterpart to his co-star, and their solid chemistry often lifts the film whenever it becomes a bit too bland.

Around Momoa and Bautista, the movie assembles several various cast members, whose main job is no more than bringing a bit of local touch to the story and characters. Despite their functional supporting parts, Maia Kealoha and Frankie Adams hold each own small place well around the story, and Morena Baccarin, who has been mainly known for her Emmy-nominated supporting turn in American TV drama series “Homeland”, imbues her thankless role with some pluck later in the story. While Stephen Root, Temuera Morrison, and Jacob Batalon are suitably cast in their respective substantial supporting parts, Claes Bang willingly goes over the top at times as the main villain of the story, but his grand attempt is often outmatched by the sheer overacting by Japanese entertainer Miyavi, who goes a little too far as he previously did in “Unbroken” (2014).

Overall, “The Wrecking Crew” is just another passable product from Amazon Prime, but it is not wholly without fun and entertainment at least. I do not recommend it mainly because my mind kept going somewhere instead of getting really engaged and entertained, but you may watch it instead of that recent documentary film about the despicably superficial wife of that orange-faced prick in the White House.