Movie Review: The Wrecking Crew

The Wrecking Crew

Imperial Entertainment, Filmwerks, Scanbox Danmark A/S, USA, 1999.

The movie opens with a hazy scene where gangsta rapper Dra-Man (Snoop Dogg) tells about dead homies. Dra-Man is Da Boss. Dra-man is feared. Dra-Man is Death. Dra-man is unstoppable. Etc, etc. Gang war starts. Chicago hires hit squad Wrecking Crew to kill Dra-Man. Menace (Ice-T) shoots Dra-Man. Exit Snoop Dogg, Still 70 minutes of the movie left.

Dra-Man

Menace

111 gang and Hakiem (Ernie Hudson Jr.) join with Loc-gang and their leader Sly (David Askew) to get the control of the city back from the Cartel and their leader Joseph (T.J. Storm). 111s and Locs are betrayed and the Cartel gets to know the meeting location.

111 gang

Hakiem

Sly

Gangstas walk in empty warehouse talking business, flashing gang signs and shooting stuff. Cartel thugs are after 111s and Locs and the Wrecking Crew is after them all. The doors are barred and the only way to survive is to shoot their way out. Effective killer Menace stalks in the shadows. But does the Wrecking Crew have its own hidden agenda?

Loc gang

Joseph

The production values are barely of what Nigerian Nollywood-movies have today. Actually they may be even lower. Just search Youtube for Nollywood films, lots of enthusiastic film making there although the quality is still far from Hollywood. "The Wrecking Crew"  looks like it had budget of about $500, with noisy and grainy video quality. Gritty realism or terrible film making, you decide.

Peek-a-boo!

The movie was filmed somewhere in eastern Europe. Pyun has said that when the films "The Wrecking Crew" and "Urban Menace" were finished the airlines lost half of the film material and they had to use the rough copies. The action scenes look like absolute mess. The soundtrack consists of Ice-T's record playing in the background. At least the USA edition contains isolated music track and commentary track, but these possibly entertaining features are absent from the Scandinavian DVD. If there is something good to say about the movie, at least it is mercifully short (76 minutes). This is terrible even by standards of Albert Pyun.

For Finnish review see what ...noir has to say:

http://halnoir.blogspot.com/2015/09/the-wrecking-crew-2000.html

Rating: Very bad

Starring: Ice-T, Ernie Hudson Jr., T.J. Storm, David Askew, Tarsha Nicole Jones, Vincent Klyn, Romany Malco, Rob Ladesich, Snoop Dogg, Jahi J.J. Zuri

Director: Albert Pyun