George Clooney and Brad Pitt have both enjoyed lengthy careers thanks at least in part to their ability to pivot from the job requirements of a movie star to those of a character actor. But they know there’s a time when “movie star” is what’s being asked of them, and Wolfs is one of those times.
A mostly negligible comedy about two rival, aging crime-scene cleaners, Wolfs defies any attempt by writer-director Jon Watts (the Tom Holland Spider-Man trilogy) to imbue the story with complexity; there are flashes of character study, and half-hearted attempts to craft a labyrinthine conspiracy, but the film ultimately exists as a delivery device for Clooney and Pitt to engage in prickly banter and deadpan wisecracking. Any ideas deeper than that are rejected like an unsuitable liver.
For most of the running time those pleasures are enough. They are two of their generation’s leading leading men, and to see them (and their characters) do their jobs with cool precision can be a real delight. But a certain amount of sag sets in with the final third, as Watts aims at profundity rather than leaning into the fact that’s he’s made a hang-out movie, a lark. Wolfs operates just fine as a soufflé until it suddenly decides it wants to be a beef Wellington.
District-attorney candidate Margaret (Amy Ryan) has a problem; she’s in a hotel penthouse with a guy she picked up in the lobby, and now that guy is dead. A trusted associate once gave her the phone number of a man (Clooney) to call when problems like this one arise, and he calmly talks her through it, arriving at the hotel with all the tools he needs to make this situation go away. A few minutes after his arrival, in walks another man (Pitt), who’s been called in by Pam, the hotel’s owner (voiced by Frances McDormand). This man also has all the tools necessary to make this situation go away.
Since both men pride themselves on being “the only one who can do what he does,” there is an instant dislike and distrust between them. But since both Margaret and the hotelier insist that these lone wolves work together, work together they do. (The film’s title could be read one of two ways: Each character is a “lone wolf,” and thus resists pluralization, or perhaps they are both akin to “Victor the Wolf,” the fixer Harvey Keitel played in Pulp Fiction.)
In any event, what begins as a simple corpse-removal grows more and more complicated over the course of a wintry New York night, involving several parcels of uncut heroin, a panicky drug-runner (Austin Abrams, The Starling Girl), and both the Croatian and Albanian crime families of the metropolitan area. The introduction of Abrams’ character takes the movie out into the world, with Clooney’s and Pitt’s characters (who are credited only as “Margaret’s man” and “Pam’s man,” respectively) chasing him via foot and automobile all over a snowy Chinatown, with their quarry dressed only in briefs and white socks.
Cinematographer Larkin Seiple (Everything Everywhere All at Once) effectively brings a grim chill to the wintry setting, even with the occasional visible reminder of the Christmas season; this permeating icy gloom gives the film a look that seems distinct from hundreds of other NYC crime movies. Meanwhile, the charismatic score by Theodore Shapiro (Jackpot!) is a piece of vintage heist-movie sonic verve, adapting itself to the suspenseful and comedic with ease.
The stars are pretty much the show, with their tough-guy one-upmanship — somewhere between Mamet and masculine camp — as much fun to watch as their occasional, reluctant moments of vulnerability. (They’ve both got back and vision issues.) Abrams and Ryan each get a wonderfully manic monologue as characters who wouldn’t normally find themselves in this kind of conundrum. And if doing a bit of genre fluff recharges their batteries for whatever serious-minded projects they have in waiting, well, movies that are far less entertaining have been made for far worse reasons.
Director: Jon Watts
Screenwriter: Jon Watts
Cast: Brad Pitt, George Clooney, Amy Ryan, Austin Abrams, Pooma Jagannathan, Richard Kind, Zlatko Buric
Producers: Jon Watts, Dianne McGunigle, Grant Heslov, George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Dede Gardner, Jeremy Kleiner
Executive producer: Michael Beugg
Director of photography: Larkin Seiple
Production design: Jade Healy
Costume design: Amy Westcott
Editing: Andrew Weisblum
Music: Theodore Shapiro
Sound design: Paul Urmson, re-recording mixer–supervising sound editor, Brian Bowles, supervising dialogue & adr editor
Production companies: Apple Original Films, Freshman Year, Plan B, Smokehouse Pictures
In English
108 minutes
