‘Wolfs’ Reunites George Clooney and Brad Pitt, Parties Like It’s 1999
Everyone makes mistakes. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a tinker, a tailor, a rich man, a poor man, a beggar man, or a streaming service owned by a major tech company that dabbles in film production. Or, for that matter, a female district attorney in New York City whose entire political persona is based on being tough on crime, and is now sitting in a posh hotel suite looking at a dead body. How the handsome young corpse in the tighty-whities ended up being her problem isn’t important. What she needs is someone who will make said problem go away, and quickly.
Lucky for Margaret (Amy Ryan), the D.A. currently staring down the barrel of a career-ending scandal, she’s got a number for a guy who can help in these types of cases. One phone call later, the fixer shows up. It’s a good thing she found him, he says — he’s an expert, a professional, and “the only guy who can do what he does in the city.” Then there’s a knock at the door. A second gentleman has now entered the picture. It turns out he’s been hired to handle this unfortunate situation as well, in his case by the hotel. Apparently, Mr. I’m-the-Single-Person-Who-Can-Rectify-This-Shitstorm was off by a full 50 percent on his calculation regarding who’s proficient at the disposal of NYC cadavers.
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So Fixer No. 1 and Fixer No. 2 now find themselves in a bit of a pickle, what with this job being double-booked. They’re told that that they have to work together on this. Each is a lone wolf, however, and as the grammatically incorrect title Wolfs suggests (justice for proper pluralization of nouns!), being saddled with a partner is not their preferred state of being. But hey, they’re professionals. Not to mention that a backpack full of drugs at the scene of the crime complicates things in a way that might be too much for one cryptic, stoic clean-up guy. Also, that dead twentysomething? He might not be, like, totally and completely dead. Bickering, shenanigans, and gunfire ensue.
This all sounds well and good, you might think, but why should I care about two dudes running around New York, trying to one-up each other over who is the better underworld go-to for these kinds of messes? Well, what if we told you that George Clooney — gray hair, very charming and witty, was on E.R. a long time ago — plays one of the fixers? And his chief rival for this specific gig is portrayed by Brad Pitt — part-time architect, two-time People‘s Sexiest Man of the Year winner, may have done a few sit-ups and crunches in his day — in full slow-burn mode? Now we have your attention. This is not just a self-conscious crime comedy, per se. This is a dual-star vehicle, the kind that knows that, with a little bit of winking and nudging and 2/11ths of the Ocean’s Eleven crew, this has a better chance of being an old-fashioned good time at the moving pictures in a newfangled I.P.-centric world. The film’s aims are fairly modest. It wants nothing more than to be the single best movie of 1997.
Much like Ticket to Paradise, another throwback to the era when honest-to-God A-listers roamed the earth in packs and one that successfully paired Clooney with his fellow Mt. Olympus neighbor Julia Roberts, Wolfs would likely be looked at as a decent enough diversion back in the day — the kind of highly watchable mediocrity that falls between perfect cross-country-flight viewing and acceptable programming for when you’re too hungover to get off the couch. Many of you will likely see this while lounging on your couch regardless, in fact, since Apple ixnayed a promised wide theatrical run and decided instead to give it a limited release on screens starting Sept. 20, before premiering it on their streaming service a mere week later on Sept. 27. Like we said at the beginning, everyone makes mistakes. We strongly encourage you to see Wolfs in a theater, with a crowd, on a giant screen, partially for the maximum time-machine effect and mostly because this at least deserves to be treated as something other than just mere content.
Seen now, however, this excuse to watch Clooney and Pitt do their ha-ha-bang-bang double act — and exhibit an unholy amount of bromantic chemistry — feels like something akin to a tonic. Jon Watts, the director of the Tom Holland trilogy of Spider-Man movies, seems as happy as the rest of us to give the superheroics a rest for a second; he simply wants to run two famous guys around New York City from dusk till dawn, displaying a journeyman’s facility for keeping things moving by any means necessary. Euphoria‘s Austin Abrams gifts the previously-thought-deceased young man with a manic energy once he proves to be every bit alive, delivering a motor-mouthed monologue that’s a highlight until an ill-timed music cue ruins everything. You might recognize the voice of the hotel owner issuing Pitt’s fixer orders, and yes, it’s the Oscar winner you think it is. The Butch and Sundance vibe is extra-strong here, so much so that Watts and his stars explicitly pay homage to that earlier star-powered buddy comedy’s ending.
It’s all at the service of the Clooney-Pitt Show, and credit Wolfs for reminding you how fun the sight of these two guys running around while shooting guns, looking late-middle-aged cool and cracking wise, remains. This used to be a typical Friday night at the movies, and now it’s a rarity. That isn’t an excuse to give this a full pass, but it is enough to make you think that attention should still be paid. Apple may have screwed the gents’ film out of an extended run at multiplexes, yet the company has also greenlit a sequel. Even they know a good pairing when they see it.
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