Sunday, February 1, 2026

Movie: The Wrecking Crew (2026) Caution Spoiler Alert

 

The Wrecking Crew



Came out; 2026

Time; 2 hours 4 Minutes

Watched: Amazon


Rated: R for strong bloody violence, sexual material, pervasive language and some drug use


IMDB Rating; 6.5/10


Rotten Tomatoes:

Tomato Meter 74%

Popcorn Meter 68%


Caution; Spoiler Alert


Staring;


Dave Bautista as James Hale

Jason Momoa as Jonny Hale

Temuera Morrison as Governor Peter Mahoe

Frankie Adams as Haunani Palakiko

Claes Bang as Marcus Robichuax

Jacob Hatalon as Pika

Morena Baccarin as Valentina

Stephen Root as Detective Rennert


Story Line;


Estranged half-brothers Jonny and James reunite after their father's mysterious death. As they search for the truth, buried secrets reveal a conspiracy threatening to tear their family apart

Thoughts:


This was a pretty good movie! It was funny and lots of action


Like most action movies it had several of those “That would have killed him” sequences and action that couldn't actually happen in real life


The actors had chemistry and it was easy to follow


CAUTION; Spoiler Alert


Private investigator Walter Hale (Brian L. Keaulana) is killed in an apparent hit and run in Hawaii. His sons and estranged half-brothers, US Navy SEAL James (Dave Bautista) and suspended police detective Johnny (Jason Momoa) are informed of his passing. Yakuza thugs attack Johnny at his Oklahoma home, believing that Walter had sent him a package. Although initially ambivalent about Walter's passing because of their non-existent relationship, Johnny decides to head to Hawaii to attend the funeral and investigate his death. There, he is reunited with James and meets his wife Leila (Roimata Fox) and their children, as well as their cousin Nani (Frankie Adams) who works for longtime family friend Governor Peter Mahoe (Temuera Morrison).


Both Johnny and James investigate Walter's death separately, converging on his ransacked apartment. They work with Walter's assistant Pika (
Jacob Batalon) and find blueprints for a casino hidden in a surfboard. With Nani's help, they discover the casino is to be built on Hawaiian home lands, with the site already home to a small community. Johnny and James infiltrate an art museum fundraiser benefit held at developer Marcus Robichaux's (Claes Bang) house. Johnny discovers that Walter had been hired by both Marcus and his wife Monica (Lydia Peckham) to investigate each other, while James encounters yakuza leader Nakamura (Miyavi) whose shell company owns the vehicle involved in Walter's death. Johnny goes to meet Monica the next day but finds her dead; believing Marcus to be responsible, he returns to the house to confront him, but is beat up by Marcus' security and locked up in jail.

After Johnny is released, James and Johnny fight each other to settle their differences, with Johnny revealing that he is motivated to investigate Walter's death because he was unable to solve the murder of his own mother, while James reveals that he sent Johnny away to save his life from the Syndicate, a local crime group that Johnny blames for his mother's death, leading to their estrangement. Johnny's ex-girlfriend Valentina (
Morena Baccarin) calls him from Oklahoma, telling him that a package from Walter had arrived at his house. After Valentina personally delivers the package to Hawaii, they find it contains a flash drive that acts as a security key to a digital wallet owned by Walter before they are attacked by more yakuza. After fighting them off, they discover the digital wallet contains millions of dollars as well as transaction information relating to offshore bank accounts owned by Governor Mahoe. They come to the conclusion that Robichaux, in league with the yakuza, has been bribing the Governor to legalize gambling and to give him permission to build a casino on Hawaiian home land, and that Walter was murdered after he uncovered the plot and sent the flash drive to Johnny.

James and Johnny receive a call from Robichaux revealing that he has kidnapped Leila and Nani, and demands the flash drive for their lives. James and Johnny assault his house, rescue Leila and Nani, and kill Nakamura and Robichaux. Mahoe is arrested for corruption while the leader of the Syndicate gives Johnny the name of the man who killed his mother in appreciation for dealing with the yakuza; however Johnny burns the paper with the killer's name in a barbecue. Johnny decides to stay in Hawaii with James and they make plans to spend the millions left to them by Walter in the digital wallet.

Monday, January 5, 2026

Chronic Pain Thoughts: Doctor Patient Forum Repost: Millions of Pain Patients Are Abandoned. Silence Is Complicity.

 

For years, pain patients were told to fight for harm reduction.

We did.

We defended it publicly.
We were told it helped us too.
We were told, “We’re in this together.”

When we say “abandoned pain patients,” we are talking about people with severe chronic illness and disability cancer survivors, neurological disease, connective tissue disorders, spinal injuries, degenerative conditions, and rare diseases who were stable on opioid therapy and then cut off.

Now let’s talk reality.

Workforce:

Harm reduction workforce (very rough estimate):
Between 
75,000 and 250,000 paid workers nationwide.

That includes:

  • State and local Departments of Health

  • CDC-funded programs and centers

  • University-based harm-reduction initiatives

  • SAMHSA grant recipients

  • Nonprofits, outreach teams, peers, administrators

That is a massive, funded workforce with salaries, platforms, and access to legislators.

Pain patients abandoned from opioid care:
Zero funded workers.
No federal or state workforce assigned to them.
No program offices.
No case managers.
No rapid response teams.

Funding:

Harm reduction funding:

  • Hundreds of millions of dollars per year in direct federal harm-reduction and overdose-prevention funding

  • $1–2+ billion annually in federal opioid response and grant funding that states can use for harm-reduction activities

This money pays salaries, builds programs, funds research, supports advocacy, and sustains institutions.

Funding for abandoned pain patients who lost access to opioids:
$0.

No federal grants.
No state grants.
No dedicated funding streams.

Not “very little.”
Not “hard to track.”
Just Zero. $0. Nada. Nothing.

The one program that was supposed to help:

There is exactly one federal program that was supposed to respond when opioid policy causes harm and when clinics close: the Opioid Rapid Response Program (ORRP).

ORRP is run through the CDC, with involvement from federal agencies including the Office of Inspector General and the DEA.

What did ORRP do?

  • Excluded pain patients from public meetings

  • Banned DPF, the only national organization documenting pain-patient abandonment

  • Dismissed and mocked pain patients who called begging for help

  • Lied about DPF, having us blacklisted from public meetings both through ORRP, Project Echo, and ASTHO. (Yes, we have the receipts in FOIA responses)

So let’s be clear.
This problem was assigned to one office.
That office chose not to act other than shuffling pain patients into addiction clinics. That office called DPF and left what felt like a threatening message. We have the FOIA response to prove they lied about DPF and had us blacklisted.

Scale of the populations:

Estimated people with opioid use disorder: ~2–3 million
Tracked. Counted. Funded. Surveyed annually.

Estimated people still on daily opioids for pain: ~8–11 million

How many pain patients are currently medically abandoned?
How many will lose care next year?

We do not know.

Because no one even bothers to count them.

More hypocrisy:

An Office of Inspector General report flagged it as unacceptable if a Suboxone clinic was more than five miles from a patient.

Five miles.

Pain patients today are:

  • Driving hundreds of miles

  • Flying across the country

  • Bedbound and unable to travel at all

  • Plus, further than 50 miles is considered a red flag, which leads to more medical abandonment.

So, I am still waiting to hear how harm reduction is helping abandoned pain patients.

The truth:

I can name the harm-reduction workers who actively include abandoned pain patients in their work on one hand.

One hand.

I am deeply grateful for every one of them.

But when there are tens or hundreds of thousands of harm-reduction workers nationwide, that silence is not accidental.

We fought for harm reduction.

You have the workforce.
You have the funding.
You have the platforms.
You have the access.

You could fight for abandoned pain patients.

You choose not to.

And every single day, I receive messages like this one that came in today:

My partner was stable on opioids for years. Her doctor of 15 years closed abruptly. No one will help her. She is in constant pain, vomiting, going unconscious, and has had seizures from withdrawal. She is bedbound. I don’t think she will last much longer. What can I do?”

Yes, I’m angry. Anyone who reads the hundreds of messages we receive every day like this one would be angry. Anger is the appropriate response to this level of suffering.

This is what your silence looks like.

So don’t tell pain patients we’re “in this together.”

Show us.

Until then, stop asking the people with no funding, no workforce, and no safety net to carry the moral burden for a system that refuses to carry ours.

To pain patients reading this: We see you.

We are here for you. We will never stop fighting. We will keep collecting your stories, documenting what is happening, and fighting for change. Your suffering will not be erased, minimized, or reframed to make others more comfortable.

You are not invisible here.
And you are not alone.

Please support The Doctor Patient Forum 

Movie: The Voices (2014) Caution: Spoiler Alert

 

The Voices



Came out; 2014

Time; 1 hours 43 Minutes

Watched: Amazon


Rated: R for bloody violence, and for language, including sexual references


IMDB Rating; 6.3/10


Rotten Tomatoes:

Tomato Meter 74%

Popcorn Meter 58%


Caution; Spoiler Alert


Staring;


Ryan Reynolds as Jerry

Gemma Arterton as Fiona

Anna Kendrick as Lisa

Jacki Weaver as Dr. Warren

Ella Smith as Allison


Story Line;


Jerry (Ryan Reynolds) is that chipper guy clocking the 9-to-5 at a bathtub factory, with the offbeat charm of anyone who could use a few friends. With help from his court-appointed psychiatrist, he pursues his office crush (Gemma Arterton), but their relationship takes a sudden murderous turn after she stands him up for a date. Guided by his evil talking cat and benevolent talking dog, Jerry must decide whether to keep striving for normalcy or indulge in the sinister.

Thoughts:


You ever find a movie by accident and realize it's old and you had never heard of it? That's how this one was, going through trying to find a movie and we came across this preview. We like Ryan Reynolds so we thought, why not?


This starts off strong and gets weird. It's definitely not what we expected, it was decent it just got dark.


CAUTION; Spoiler Alert


Jerry works at Milton, shipping and delivery department. He lives on his own above MELLOW, a rusty disused bowling alley. He has conversations with his dog Bosco and his cat Mr. Whiskers. One day, his manager compliments his work and chooses him to help organise an employee picnic and a conga line as Fiona suggested in a the meeting. During the preparations, the whole team is in a restaurant and he asks the English Fiona on a date. He invites her to the best spectacle in the world and she doesn't know how to decline. His therapist asks Jerry about his prescription taking.

Friday night, Jerry watches a Chinese Elvis and a resurrected Bruce Lee while Fiona and the co-workers girls karaoke. On his side he leaves an unlimited Shi-Shan buffet and cross Fiona unable to get home. Jerry stops and gives her a ride. Jerry is in Heaven, everything is bright and Fiona is an Angel. Suddenly in the forest the car crashes into a deer. Jerry's hallucinations show the deer crying out in pain and begging Jerry to kill it, and so he slits its throat. Fiona, terrified, runs off into the woods. Jerry pursues her and trying to reassure her, he makes a lethal gesture. Apologising for hurting her, he ends her pain by stabbing her again and again. Sorry. Sorry.

Upon returning home, Bosco tells him to go the police and confess, and that he is a good man who just made a mistake. However, Mr. Whiskers says there is no shame in killing, but insists Jerry needs to dispose of the body. Jerry goes back to the wood and rolls the immaculate Cinderella body into a carpet. The sheriff asks him about his car crash. At his appointment with his shrink, Jerry confesses that he doesn't take his meds at all. Back home, he dismembers Fiona and places her meat in Tupperware boxes, and her decapitated head in the fridge. After his work Jerry takes his pills, and has nightmares of his abusive past. When he wakes up during the night, his hallucinations have ended; his pets no longer speak to him, and Fiona's head is cold and rotten. He throws away the pills in terror, and the next morning, Fiona smells like a baby-shampoo again. After breakfast, Fiona asks for a friendly severed head to share her days, but Jerry insists that he can't. Butterfly and sparklers are back in Jerrys life. He didn't want to be a slave to drugs but he's still between Rosco and Whiskers.

At the end of the next day at five, it's time to invite Lisa, a colleague of Fiona's from accounting, for a drink. He develops feelings for her and takes her to his abandoned childhood home, where it is revealed his German mother had confessed to her insanity and was about to be taken away by the authorities when he was a child. When they arrived, she tried to slit her throat, and begged Jerry to finish the job to end her suffering. Jerry sobs in front of Lisa, who comforts him. They go back to her house and spend the night together. He's in a dream. Lisa is on a cloud. When Jerry returns home, he still feels pressured into killing someone else by Fiona and Mr. Whiskers, and seems unsure of what to do next. Lisa interrupts the sinister meeting. She finds out Jerry's address through Milton's files and brings some cakes to his house. Inadvertently Jerry locks himself out. While he tries to get back in through the skylight, Lisa succeeds in forcing the door open. She sees Jerry's place in real dimension and wanders in and discovers the remnants of the bodies and Fiona's head on the living room table. Lisa says they can forget it and go back to normal. When she tries to leave, Jerry throws her aside and accidentally breaks her neck. Fiona now has a fridgemate. Other co-workers from Milton begin to wonder about Fiona and Lisa. When their colleague Alison goes to MELLOW, Jerry immediately kills and dismembers her. A new companion in the fridge and the voices add in the apartment.

Jerry looks very bad. He falls apart in front of his counsellor Dr. Warren and confesses his killings but she tries to make a call. He takes her hostage into the countryside and forces her to help him. She calms him down and shows understanding, which makes him feel better. Ten years of therapy in ten seconds. Meanwhile, John and another colleague finds Alison's car behind Jerry's house. They break into it, they retreat immediately and call the police. When Jerry returns home, holding Dr Warren, cops surround his house and prepare to move in. Jerry flees down into the basement, breaking a pipe. Dr. Warren is taken to hospital. The police are knocked back when the pipe Jerry broke causes a gas leak, which leads to a huge explosion. Down in the bowling alley, Jerry collapses and dies from smoke inhalation.After a long corridor, in a white void, Bosco and Mr. Whiskers says Goodbye to each other. Jerry meets his parents, then appears with Fiona, Lisa, and Alison, and Jesus, and they all dance together. Sing the Happy song. Sing the Happy song. Come on clap your hands. Sing the Happy song.