It’s no spoiler to report that George Clooney and Brad Pitt’s characters survive the ending of director Jon Watts’ crime thriller, Wolfs. After all, the writing of the sequel has already been announced, whether that’s just a crafty play by Apple TV+ for an additional news cycle or not. What may not survive this film is the very idea of expensive, dependable A-list stars half-winking their way through bright lights and big cities for a blithely diverting seriocomic confection. Indeed, Wolfs, in which Clooney and Pitt play professional fixers forced to work together when they’re hired to cover up the same crime, feels like a eulogy for sophisticated capers like the Oceans series that helped make them global superstars.
This is not to say Wolfs isn’t a moderately entertaining noir-inflected genre exercise. Theodore Shapiro’s score is silky smooth, the New York City locations are darkly glamorous, and Clooney and Pitt’s all-black wardrobe would be the envy of Cary Grant. But there’s a nagging sense that Clooney and Pitt are exchanging insults, Advils, and side glances in a losing cause. For a duo mostly inoculated from the ravages of declining stardom, the post-celebrity age might be finally upon them. That’s what it feels like here, as the iconic pair, on-screen together for the first time since 2008’s Burn After Reading, is stranded performing their song and dance for an audience that has mostly moved on.
Clooney and Pitt are Well-Dressed and All Business
Watts has not directed a film without the word “Spider-Man” in the title since 2015’s indie thriller, Cop Car, and those hoping he’d force Clooney and Pitt to get down and dirty for a low-budget lark will be disappointed. Watts could bankroll approximately 14 Cop Car sequels with the $70 million or so reportedly shoveled at Clooney and Pitt alone. This is a luxe production all the way, starting with the appearance of Clooney as an unnamed character referred to in press notes as Pam’s Man but on Wikipedia as Jack (we’re going with Jack for clarity and simplicity).
Jack is a fixer first seen entering a $10,000 a night hotel room occupied by New York’s terrified District Attorney (Amy Ryan) and a presumably dead man in his underwear (Austin Abrams). What happened to him is not Jack’s concern. Jack’s job is to surreptitiously remove him from the hotel with the discretion inherent in his secretive, lone wolf profession where flattery takes the form of compliments like “there’s only one man in the city who can do what you do.”
In playing an all-business, extralegal character, Clooney turns off the charm and self-effacing humor for a vibe of near-constant annoyance he can’t fully sell, mostly because he’s too inherently charming and self-effacing. That leaves it to Pitt to approach the material with the same level of engaged nonchalance we do and he delivers. A performer of endlessly hilarious tics and barely perceptible mannerisms, Pitt brings an appropriately dull sparkle to his character, also unnamed but referred to in the press notes as Margaret’s Man and on Wikipedia as Nick (we’re going with Nick). With Jack preparing to deftly wrap up the body and tie it to a luggage cart, Nick suddenly enters the hotel room claiming he’s also been called to “take care of your problem.”
This opening scene in the hotel room goes on for 30 minutes, which is an admirable little gamble. But Watts, who also wrote the quippy, calculated script, is hardly Aaron Sorkin or David Mamet, and the verbal one-upmanship and A-type zingers meant to establish Nick and Jack’s frosty dynamic wears out its welcome. Luckily for us, when Nick sees a backpack full of uncut heroin in the corner, the duo begin their deep dive into the increasingly dangerous bowels of New York.
Austin Abrams Kicks the Film into Gear
So at heart, Wolfs is a blank check version of one-night-only thrillers like Martin Scorsese’s After Hours and Michael Mann’s Collateral but without the free-for-all energy of the former or the edgy nocturnal frisson of the latter. Whatever freshness Wolfs has to offer comes from Abrams (The Walking Dead), who springs the movie to life when his character, referred to as The Kid, suddenly springs to life in the trunk of Jack’s car.
Looking like comedian Demetri Martin’s younger brother, Abrams brings a desperate, fidgety energy to the part that the film sorely needs. The unreliable Kid, who repeatedly reminds everyone that he’s not a male prostitute, is Jack and Nick’s only source of information and their key to surviving the night.
Keeping him alive long enough to trace the heroin back to its source means a visit to an underground doctor (Poorna Jagannathan) operating from the back of a Chinatown restaurant and a (too long) foot chase across Manhattan. Abrams also provides the film’s best moment, a showstopping monologue where The Kid spills his heart out regarding how he acquired the heroin and wound up in bed with the District Attorney.
Sorry, George and Brad, the Aughts are Over
It’s no coincidence that Wolfs‘ brightest moments come not from its two main selling points but from someone a fraction of their age and with a fraction of their fame. The time when two long-beloved superstars dancing awkwardly at a Croatian wedding was considered the height of fish-out-of-water comedy has faded into the rear view. As is the time when the height of comedic irony was a super-serious black ops-style killer listening to Sade’s slinky hits “No Ordinary Love” and “Smooth Operator” in his car.
Back when stars other than Tom Cruise opened films, directors like Steven Soderbergh made star-studded big-money productions that felt light on their feet. In fact, Soderbergh directed Clooney and Pitt together in three of them. Wolfs, however, wants us to feel the weight of its star power and the king’s ransom spent on its creation. But Nick and Jack’s simultaneous yawn towards the end of the film doesn’t just signify that they’ve gone from wary rivals to simpatico friends. It signifies a pop cultural fatigue and disinterest in the sinking ship of boomer celebrity culture.
Wolfs will debut in select theaters September 20, 2024 before its global premiere on Apple TV+ September 27, 2024. You can watch it then through the link below: