Brad Pitt and George Clooney spend an evening together just being cool in their latest team-up.
DIRECTED BY: JON WATTS/2024
After finding mega-success with directing Spider-Man: Homecoming, Spider-Man: Far From Home, and Spider-Man: No Way Home for Marvel, Jon Watts writes and directs a much smaller film for AppleTV+ titled Wolfs. The mispelling is intentional as the two main protagonists aren’t wolves plural….but a couple of lone wolfs who happen to be brought together. Starring Brad Pitt and George Clooney, Wolfs leans heavily into that Oceans 11-13 cool vibe that these two have developed over the years as their own modern version of the Rat Pack.
When the district attorney, who we’ll call Margaret (Amy Ryan) finds herself in a plush New York hotel room with a dead young man (who is not a prostitute) on the shattered remains of a glass bar cart after they were enjoying themselves too much, she makes a phone call. This is to a number she doesn’t know, to a person she’s never met, but she was given this number by somone she trusts in case anything happened that she might need “taken care of”. The voice on the other end of that call is a fixer who is now known as “Margaret’s Man” (George Clooney). He comes in to the hotel to make this problem go away.
Throwing a wrench into his clean-up is when there is a knock on the door. The hotel, through hidden surveillance cameras, knows what has happened as well. The hotel’s owner, Pam, has sent her own fixer, who will be known as “Pam’s Man” (Brad Pitt). Due to the competing interests of both Margaret, the district attorney, and Pam, the hotel owner, both of these lone wolf fixers are forced to work together to clean up the mess in the hotel and make it go away. When the dead body turns out to be very much alive, and goes on the run, these Wolfs must chase “the kid” (Austin Abrams), and work to free themselves from the very dangerous situation suddenly find themselves in.
Clooney and Pitt are having fun working together again, and it shows. Their press tour for this film has them even discussing an Oceans 14. Frankly, they sort of exhude the Frank Sinatra/Dean Martin swagger and vibe, with a lot more tongue-in-cheek humor that demonstrates that they truly don’t take it all that seriously. The result is that whether the story is interesting or not isn’t as much the point as the journey of just hanging with these two guys. Even “the kid” exclaims at one point, “You two are the coolest guys I’ve ever met”. They’re that cool! Even the way “Margaret’s Man” (Clooney) gets a body off a hotel baggage trolley is pretty cool.
Jon Watts keeps the camera lens tight, and avoids lots of backstory for these two characters. What they don’t say about themselves tells us plenty and reinforces just how “lone wolf” these Wolfs are. Unlike Watt’s Marvel films, the violence here is quick and realistic, which fits the fixer/hit man vibe of these two’s chosen profession. Amy Ryan is great in the few minutes she spends on screen, and the same can be said for Poorna Jagannathan, who plays a go-to-doctor each wolf uses for certain jobs. Austin Abrams holds his own as the sidekick to Clooney and Pitt’s characters, carving out a nice likeable niche for his character.
Wolfs is a strong enough film for a streaming service like AppleTV+, especially given the draw of its two main leads, though it probably wouldn’t have been a strong box office contender at the local cinema. The plot is sound, the chemistry of the leads is strong, but it clips along at such a slow pace at times which lessens the impact this film could have had. I wouldn’t mind seeing these two team up for additional projects like a future Oceans 14, but Wolfs should probably prove the lone film for these lone wolf characters.
