Ángel Manuel Soto’s The Wrecking Crew wastes no time establishing its swagger: a sun-drenched, bone-crunching action comedy set on the streets of Hawaii, where estranged half-brothers Jonny (Jason Momoa) and James (Dave Bautista) reunite after their father’s mysterious death, only to find themselves tangled in buried secrets and a family-shattering conspiracy.
When our Peter Gray spoke with Soto, their conversation naturally drifted toward how the tempo of action and comedy is shaped behind the camera, and how much of the film’s humor is carefully engineered versus discovered in the moment, as actors like Momoa inject their own surprising beats into the chaos.
One of the things that I love, right off the bat, with The Wrecking Crew was how you have this great blend of action and comedy. And so much of that lives or dies on rhythm. It made me think of music, and when you’re building a sequence, are you thinking like a choreographer, an editor, or a DJ?
I think all of the above. I started first as an editor before I started directing, so I feel like I auto-trained myself a little bit to shoot, to edit, to be economical, and to understand that a good editor has needs to have good rhythm. I like to think that all my editors can dance, and if you can dance, you have rhythm. I think you have a good sense of pacing. People say it’s about pacing. (But) you can still have pace and have terrible rhythm. There’s a dance that you have to keep in mind that you’re doing with the audience as well. I like to think it that way. It’s an exchange. I’m not trying to force you. You want to make it feel like there’s a collaboration of energy with the audience.
I do think about it very musically. I like to think, “Oh, this is very percussive.” For the chase sequence, I wanted it to feel like a rock band in a garage, you know? Even in the house attack, we got the drummer from Avenged Sevenfold. It feels very organic. It doesn’t feel orchestrated. I wanted it to have this more rock energy to it.
Well, you have a great musician in Jason Momoa. I’m an unashamed fan. He has this amazing ability to undercut his own physicality. He’s action capable, and then he’ll just land a line that disarms you entirely. When you’re directing someone like him, are you actively shaping moments for comedy? Or are you watching and calibrating in real time based on what he brings on the day?
Both. I knew that I wanted the action to be brutal, to be visceral, to be shocking. And I think if you don’t add moments of levity, the tone starts to go darker and brutal. So being able to allow him space to play within the context of, “Okay, where can we find something to soften the blow?” For example, with the cheese grater moment, I always wanted to do that in a movie, because it’s a fear I have that I’m going to cut my own fingers off when I’m grating cheese. I was like, “Let me put it in the movie.” I think it’s great and he plays it (just) right. And then the whole bite-the-curb thing with the teeth? If you don’t add a moment of levity, then it starts to get sadistic in the wrong direction.
I mean, you gave us a “sword fight” for the ages, and that arm moment in the car…
That’s another fear! I used to do this in the car with my dad all the time (mimics waving his arm out of a car window), and my dad would always say, “You know, you better put your arm inside, because you never know if it’s just going to pop off, or I swerve, or I get hit…you’re going to lose your arm!” So I always had that fear, so I put it in the film to get it out of my system.
It was phenomenal. As a horror fan, it was really something.
I’m putting that out in the universe that I want to do horror.
Well, let’s sign you up! I went into this knowing I’d enjoy it, but it was so much more insane than I thought it was going to be. It was so much fun.
Thank you so much, it was nice to see you again.
The Wrecking Crew is available to stream on Prime Video from January 28th, 2026.
