The Wrecker is a real relic. The B-movie action film boasts such a bevy of retired, 80s-style clichés that it is difficult at times to discern whether the film is satire or earnest exploitation. Within the first ten minutes, the film is overdosing on machismo. Harvey Keitel screams at a bloodied cop that you “don’t mess with a man’s family!” Helmed by stuntman-turned-director Art Camacho, The Wrecker is positively plagiarized from past action fare. From Niko Foster’s bulging, overly tanned biceps to Danny Trejo’s turn as a wise father figure with a shocking facility for computer hacking, The Wrecker is a bizarre, truly hollow affair.
The film would be exciting if any of that material were self-aware, but Foster, who also wrote the incredulous script, does not seem to get the joke. His character, Tony, is an impossibly jacked car mechanic whose moral code is so strong that he was dishonorably discharged from the army for “refusing to shoot an enemy in the line of fire.” An especially silly flashback shows a young Tony playing with a friend who finds a gun, insists it isn’t loaded, and then shoots himself. The tragedy of that notwithstanding, Camacho has such poor facility with the camera that the edit feels inadvertently funny.
The Wrecker Doesn’t Have A Single Moment Of Original Thought
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Both Keitel and Gibson are severely phoning it in, but they are certainly there. Keitel’s Dante character is such a prolific criminal that his face is all over the papers, and yet an article claims he is “untouchable.” This, even though Keitel has murdered a police officer, leads me to believe this exists in some upside-down alternate universe. Not for nothing, but the article is written by “Staff Writer” and Dante is called just “Crime Lord” in the first sentence, which is the kind of AI-generated, poor attention to detail that defines the rest of the movie.
But the movie is more about Foster than either Keitel or Gibson, and his RFK-sounding husk of a voice is pretty difficult to listen to for 90 minutes. Wielding a giant phallus-like monkey wrench as a weapon, Foster is decently adept at selling the fight scenes but is a terrible bore in any other, especially as he has to sell someone who has lost a wife, and later, much more.
The plot is simple stuff: Tony’s coke-addled brother, Bobby (Chad Michael Collins) has stolen a brand new, $280,000 yellow Lamborghini from Dante, and is now being held captive. To free him, Tony agrees to go to work as muscle for Dante until his “debt is cleared.” Despite the protestations of Cheryl (Mena Suvari), who is so thirsty for Tony that she offers a key to her apartment “just in case” he needs a place to go, Tony continues his work bashing people’s heads in.
Inevitably, Dante asks Tony to kill someone, which is strictly against his code. He refuses, and Dante promptly sends his goons with the inexplicable directive of shooting up Tony’s house without killing his family. Not exactly sure how that works, but it doesn’t. Foster briefly cries before pretty promptly shifting into revenge mode, which suggests that he may never have cared about fatherhood.
Gibson’s Detective Boswell character is on the hunt now for both Dante and Tony, but the actor is so comatose that you’d think Camacho was pulling off a Weekend at Bernie‘s situation. Boswell is the kind of humorless cop who orders a coffee “black with no cream.” Yeah, that’s what a black coffee is, buddy. Speaking of Gibson’s Fast and Furious franchise, Foster’s script apes the “family” concept at the start of the third act as Tony expresses gratitude towards his mechanic brethren.
There is nothing original here, nor is there anything to suggest Foster and Camacho know as much, which means this commits the cardinal sin of being both unoriginal and unwatchable. Of all the clichés included here, the inclusion of a saccharine ending twist may be the most inane. The film’s title is something of a reference to Tony’s abilities as a basher, but it is also the name of the souped-up tank-like car his coworkers make to help him go to battle at Dante’s lair. If you were wondering if the film has a score of naked women who don’t speak a line of dialogue, yes, yes it does.
There isn’t anything here to endorse, really, but if you enjoy seeing some royal beatdowns, The Wrecker could possibly satisfy that itch. You just also have to stomach seeing a legendary actor like Keitel shelling out for some extra cash and reading lines like there are cue cards behind the camera. Whatever the case, do not confuse this film for the so-bad-it’s-good variety. It is simply a wreck.