Wrecking Crew

 

A more appropiate tag line would no doubt be "Time to kiss 90 mins of your life goodbye"

Title: The Wrecking Crew
Director: Albert Pyun
Released: 1999
Staring: Ice T, Snoop Dog, Ernie Hudson Jr., T.J Storm, David Askew
Rating: 1.5 / 5


Plot: The Wrecking Crew are a government funded, special branch of the police force, lead by the ruthless "Menace" (Ice T) and who are brought in to solve the gang problem, when the regular police fail to handle. Meanwhile two Detroit street gangs "The 111" and "the Locs", have decided to call a truce, in order to fight against "the Cartel", who are currently moving in on both gangs territory, unaware that the Cartel have been tipped off about the meeting which the two gang leaders have arranged and have planned an ambush much like the Wrecking crew who are now also moving in on the gangs





Review: Recently it seems, more and more rappers are moving into acting, often using the films as the promotional platform for their latest album release and "The Wrecking Crew" is basically another of these glorified album promos, which in this case is for Ice T's "7th Deady Sin" which provides the majority of the films soundtrack.The Wrecking crew was the first of three movies (the other two being "Urban Menace" & "Corrupt") directed by Pyun and scripted by Pyun's occasional collaborator Hannah Blue, who also wrote scripts for three of Pyun's other films including the early Van Dame flick "Cyborg" which she wrote under the name Kitty Chalmers. Unsurprising I guess that she stopped writing (or changed name again) after the third and final entry of this trilogy of sorts "Corupt" which along with "Urban Menace" and this film were all released in the same year, which is kind of a warning sign to begin with about the quality you shud expect with this movie, as lets face it Pyun is not Takashi Miike, who like Pyun is reknown for his phenomenal work rate but unlike Pyun manages to maintain a level of quality with the majority of his work.As to be expected Wrecking crew is by no means a great movie and perfectly defines what is no doubt for most people, their opinion of what a bad movie is and from the outset it is...actually no it really is what it looks like and that is a bad movie! So where to begin? Hmmm well I guess the best place to start is with the unknowns who make up the cast, who thankfully the majority of which are handily wiped out pretty quick by the wrecking crew who outside of Ice T are also just another bunch of unknowns, with Pyun often reusing the same actors, by using that old trick of just having the actor wear a balaclava! See now we have twice as many actors at before and at no extra cost...genius!The three gang leaders played by Ernie Hudson Jr. (yes he's the son of Ernie Hudson, better known as Winston in Ghostbusters) , T.J Storm, David Askew, don't give too much of bad a performance, despite not being helped by some pretty horrible dialogue, which does however provide the audience with a fun game of counting the number of times the word "Motherfucker" is used, which again is another example of lazy screen writing much like the title cards which pop up telling the audience which gang is which. This is kind of handy, especially seeing how everyone, dresses the same in Detroit's gangland it would seem.Plot wise this film is all over the place, as we open with stock footage of Snoop Dog, as "Dra-Man" as he's known for the whole ten seconds of screen time he has, which consists of little more than performance and interview footage intercut with footage of Snoop firing two pistols and looking like he's having some kind of seizure while a bunch of stock extras fire wildly at each other, which is kind of disappointing to the Snoop fans especially seeing how on the cover he gets such a big billing, for what is nothing more than a cameo (if that). From here we now cut to the actual story and the setup to the meeting, which soon becomes a series of shots of people getting shot or characters mumbling dialogue while trying to look cool or perhaps shud that be gangsta? I couldn't tell either way and with all the characters being so unlikable, it's also pretty hard to care either.Now looking at DVD case, which worrying enough looks like it has been photocopied it gives the impression that the viewer is to expect Hong-Kong Style action and Martial Arts, which was pretty much extras firing wildly into doorways or at the camera, with most of the carnage being merely implied, were as the martial arts part which basically boils down to one guy getting a roundhouse kick to the face, with a lot of the actions scenes coming off more like a poor John Woo movie, as extras flail about like corpses plugged into the mains, as they die (much like what was left of their careers) in a fog of fake shotgun blasts.Now like with all bad movies, there is usually that one glimmer of hope that pulls you through, which unsurprisingly especially for us fans of "Law and Order SUV" comes in the form of Ice T, who really is the penny in the pile of shit for this movie as he can clearly act and it seems obvious in many of the scenes that he see's this movie for what it really is, which is promotion for his latest album, which sadly judging by the soundtrack which it provides is far from the good ole days of "Bodycount".In many ways this film makes me question the audience that it's aimed at, which it seems is clearly for fans of Snoop Dog and Ice T, especially as it has them playing up their gangster personas, they portray in their music but surely not even their fans are as dumb as this film seems to think they are, or perhaps this is just further evidence that the youth of today really have shit for brains, especially if they rate this movie. As a final thought, I have to wonder why the only movies that rappers seem to make are these "Boyz N' The Hood" and "Menace 2 Society" knock off's. I'm sure you like myself would defiantly be up for watching "Jurassic 5" on some Scooby Doo Style mystery or "Cypress Hill" battling Zombies, but I guess until that happens, we the audience will continue to be force fed this kind of garbage.