Entertainment

Dave Bautista praises Jason Momoa's passion for Hawai'i communities

February 4, 2026 | 5:25pm

LONDON, United Kingdom — In Prime Video's "The Wrecking Crew," Jason Momoa portrays a rash, drunken police officer who returns to Hawai'i from Oklahoma after 20 years to investigate a home attack that killed his father.

The story is a near reflection of Momoa's own life — he was born in Hawai'i but lived in mainland Iowa only to move back to the island paradise for studies and later pursue a career.

In the film while going around the island with his older half-brother, played by Filipino-American actor Dave Bautista, the siblings stumble on a Hawai'ian community on native home land in the middle of a dispute.

Momoa reflected on this personal arc in an action-filled movie during an exclusive interview with Philstar.com, touching on how both he and his character are called home.

The actor called it one of the main through lines that has happened in Hawai'i — the lands that have been taken from natives, how outsiders perceive the islands, and the people who call these lands home.

"If someone wanted to come in and build a casino, they could just do it," Momoa said, referencing the film's plot and how easy it could occur in reality. "In actuality, that's on my side of the island, that's our reservation, that's land that we were put on."

Momoa also touched on both how he and his character, Jonny, are "coming home," pointing out his lived experience is something he brought to the table.

"When [Jonny] comes home, it's just like getting back into his roots and family," he ended. "Whether that umbilical cord stretches out, home's always home, and he needs to find himself again."

Dave chipped in that Jason's passion for Hawai'i and the ocean is one of the things he noticed about the actor in the years they've known each other. The two actors date back to the 2019 series "See," where they coincidentally also played brothers.

"If you've paid attention throughout his career, [Jason] has always been someone who's stood up for the islands, their history, their culture, and he expresses that through his art and almost every project that he does," the former wrestler added.

Puerto Rico

The movie's director, Ángel Manuel Soto, in a separate interview with Philstar.com, appreciated the Hawai'ian community storyline being highlighted and wished others would follow suit.

Soto said that part of the film was a non-negotiable, "If somebody said like 'Why don't we cut this scene out,' I'm not doing the f***ing movie."

The filmmaker explained that part of the movie, for him, was where he was able to shed light on the daily experiences in Puerto Rico, where Soto hails from.

So much that even if "The Wrecking Crew" took place in Puerto Rico instead or anywhere else in the world, Soto still would have fought to keep the sequence in.

He acknowledged there were Hollywood attempts to keep it safe by shooting in a set, but Soto adamant since three are Hawai'ian people living on contested home land.

"That location is real, none of that is built, all the people you see are people that live there," the director stressed. "I wanted to do that purposefully. We became good friends with the community."

Soto even noted that even in the film when a drone shot zeroes in on Momoa and Bautista's characters, the community is hidden behind the trees in land that appears barren.

The director described the environment as well-organized, distrubuting food and clothes to others, and full of resident families eager to protect each other.

"People like to talk s**t about marginalized communities, but I wanted to show the world that these are not faceless people. They live there, they exist, they laugh, cry, do everything just like us, and they've been protecting a land that's rightfully theirs [yet] always under threat of crony capitalism coming in."

He compared the situation to the development of a luxury tourism project and residential mega project with a private airport in his native Puerto Rico. Soto said Puerto Ricans are vehemently opposing these projects for exactly the same reasons as the Hawai'ians in "The Wrecking Crew."

"Being able to have that in the movie, not just for Hawai'i and its population, but also as a Puerto Rican who is able to show the world that this happens elsewhere, it was a non-negotiable," Soto reiterated to end the conversation.

"The Wrecking Crew" also stars Claes Bang, Frankie Adams, Roimata Fox, Temuera Morrison, Morena Baccarin, Stephen Root, and another Filipino-American actor, Jacob Batalon.