BEFORE: I find myself envious of Nathan Caine, to some degree - my ankle still hurts a bit and I'm going to be working tonight, standing for a long period of time, and also the next three nights as well. So I think by the end of Thursday I could be in quite a bit of pain, thank God for Icy Hot and Advil though. I think if I found myself in a situation like his, where my wife or girlfriend got kidnapped, and I didn't have his genetic condition of being impervious to pain, my reaction would probably be, "Well, I'm sure going to miss her..." Look, I'm a pacifist by nature and also by design, if I tried to fight back or enact vigilante justice in anyway, that's it, I would most likely end up dead, and really, there's no reason for us BOTH to die, right? I mean, it would be better if one of us were able to carry on, alone and sad, sure, but still alive.
Jacob Batalon carries over from "Novocaine". I don't HAVE to include this here, because it's the middle film of a 3-movie Batalon chain, but since I passed on this movie once before, I'm giving it priority status. This was cut from January's chain which had three films with Dave Bautista in a row. Sure, I could have gone for four, but look how things worked out, I needed this film HERE to make the connection and help form a path to October 1, so cutting it was the right call. But hmmm, what other big movie released in 2026 also has Jacob Batalon in it?
THE PLOT: Estranged half-brothers Jonny, a volatile suspended cop, and James, a disciplined Navy SEAL, reluctantly reunite in Hawaii after their private investigator father is murdered, triggering a dangerous clash with Yakuza operatives.
AFTER: This was a solid action film, double the star power and double the beefcake, and sure, you can maybe totally believe these two actors as brothers, even if only one is of Native Hawaiian descent, and the other is part Greek, part Filipino. Asian is Asian, right? Anyway, they're playing HALF-brothers here, so they don't have to resemble each other all that much, a little bit is fine. It might have been hard to cast an actor to play someone who would look like he could be the father of both of them.
There are some killer action scenes here, both of the car-chase / shoot-out / explosion kind and also the close combat / one-man army kind. This is what people come to this movie for, and this is also why you cast THESE two guys to be in it. Unfortunately there's hardly any plot, just barely enough to connect all of those action scenes, really. If you want to have a REASON for the close-up fighting and the car chases and the exploding helicopter, well, then you've come to the wrong place. Like there's not really any rhyme or reason here, I watched the whole thing and I can't even tell you what exactly the crime was. Oh, sure, their father was killed, but WHY? It's got something to do with casino plans, even though gambling is illegal in Hawaii. Somebody apparently thought that was going to change, though, and umm, well, it's not.
Then there's a crime syndicate of some kind, a corrupt politician and for some reason, the Japanese Yakuza. No, it does not all make sense, not by a long shot. But does it really have to? Did we determine that everything is connected, or could it be that all of the evidence is circumstantial? Did all of the evil henchmen need to DIE, every last one of them? I suppose so, but now who's left to testify? I guess I see where the "Wrecking Crew" term comes from, because these brothers only know one solution to everything, sneak in and then wreck the place. There's a party? OK, we'll dress as caterers, get in there and wreck the place. Our family members got kidnapped, no problem, we'll just sneak in and wreck the place. And these are supposed to be the GOOD guys...
They left themselves wide open for a sequel, now that they took down the person who killed their father, the next illogical move is to team up again and take down whoever killed Jonny's mother, the information was RIGHT THERE. They've got the money from the digital wallet on the hard drive to finance the operation, so another film like this should be a no-brainer.
Directed by Angel Manuel Soto (director of "Blue Beetle")
Also starring Dave Bautista (last seen in "The Naked Gun"), Jason Momoa (last seen in "A Minecraft Movie"), Temuera Morrison (last heard in "Moana 2"), Morena Baccarin (last seen in "Roger Dodger"), Roimata Fox, Frankie Adams (last seen in "Next Goal Wins"), Claes Bang (last seen in "The Last Vermeer"), Maia Kealoha, Stephen Root (last seen in "Mad Money"), Josua Tuivavalagi, Miyavi (last seen in "Kate"), David Hekili Kenui Bell, Mark R. Black, Lydia Peckham (last seen in "Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes"), Branscombe Richmond (last seen in "Journey 2: The Mysterious Island"), Brian L. Keaulana, Stephen Oyoung (last seen in "Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning"), Takuma Anzai, Mainei Kinimaka, Lelea'e Kahalepuna-Wong, Ahmed Youssef, Antonio Te Maioha (last seen in "Zoolander 2"), Ryan Farrell, Bruce Bennett Ah Leong, Mike Edward, Makana David, Meaalofa Vaifale, Josh Thomson, Kael Munro-Nonoa, Moana Johnson, Sherry Shaoling (last seen in "Repo Men"), Jodie Yee, Lila Marcellino
RATING: 6 out of 10 Navy SEAL trainees
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