WOLFS ★★★
(M) 108 minutes
A tale of two New York underworld fixers – played by Brad Pitt and George Clooney – who make a wrong day’s journey into night, Wolfs is nominally about rivals covertly cleaning up a crime scene, gangster machinations that leave them exposed, and the strain of masculine pride. But really, and ideally, it’s about movie stars. Specifically, the tangy screen sensation when you put two together and let them expertly simmer.
Brad Pitt and George Clooney trade on their ’90s charm as unnamed underworld fixers in Wolfs.
The feature was written and directed by Jon Watts, who earned a gazillion bucks with his three Spider-Man blockbusters starring Tom Holland, and is now chilling with his one-for-me project. It opens in a luxury hotel suite where a potentate is panicked. Margaret (Amy Ryan) has a barely dressed young man lying bloodied on the floor, and her call for help accidentally results in not one, but two lone wolves turning up to sort out her mess.
Neither surreptitious fixer provides a name, which is fine since we only think of them as Brad and George anyway. “I didn’t know people like you really existed,” Margaret says, a line that works equally well for the plot and the now-veteran stars filling it out. Watts has made a homage to old-school stardom, with Pitt and Clooney (60 and 63 years old respectively) underplaying every scene, whether it involves mutual bristling or farcical interludes.
With a vibe from the 1990s – the decade in which the two leads found stardom – the film is nominally an action-comedy, although the action is slinky and economical while the comedy is droll and inferred. Unlike the trio of Ocean’s heist flicks, which positioned Pitt and Clooney as the coolest of compadres, Wolfs is a low-key struggle for dominance. There are loaded glances, snippy disagreements and absurd workplace protocols.
George Clooney are Brad Pitt engage in a low-key struggle for dominance in Wolfs.
The duo looks elegantly weathered – kudos, seriously, to their hair teams – and the film is comfortably self-reflexive with their status. At one point, Pitt bends over and winces as his back objects, while there’s a lovely visual gag involving reading glasses. They insult each other without any real risk – that comes from third parties they encounter – and then flex with their competing body-bag technique. Imagine David Mamet rewriting Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are Dead.
Such panache requires some outside agitation, and most of it comes from a university student, credited as the Kid (Austin Abrams), who gets mixed up with these exasperated adults and manages to tease out the ludicrousness of this scenario while tweaking the long numb morals of his guardians. He’s a proxy for the audience, marvelling at how impressive Pitt and Clooney are.
That this is all being delivered via a streaming service instead of a multiplex is the most resonant twist Wolfs holds. It’s something of a last hurrah for its leading men, but their commitment to stylish restraint should be applauded.
The ending is too glib, but Watts’ direction is leanly efficient throughout – and that suits the project’s sangfroid. Still, the Pitt and Clooney edifice could have carried more weight. There’s only so many times you can needle-drop Sade’s Smooth Operator.
Wolfs is streaming from September 27 on Apple TV+.
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