Despite its low key release, Wolfs proves George Clooney and Brad Pitt are still a great combo, with this a lot of fun.
PLOT: Two top-level fixers (Brad Pitt and George Clooney) with underworld connections must overcome their rivalry when a job goes awry.
REVIEW: Wolfs is getting a curiously unceremonious release, considering the talent involved. There was a time when Brad Pitt and George Clooney doing a buddy action movie together would have been an event. And the movie’s good to boot! Yet, Wolfs, which comes from director Jon Watts, who made the Tom Holland Spider-Man Trilogy for the MCU, is getting a quiet one-week theatrical run before its debut on Apple TV Plus on September 27th. It’s playing on precisely one screen here in Montreal and was not screened for critics.
So, what’s going on here? Probably, Apple is still licking its wounds from the embarrassing failure of their mega-budget movies, Argylle and Fly Me To The Moon, which, despite huge casts, cratered at the box office. Their debuts on Apple TV were met with indifference, as both films have the reputation of being flops, and Apple likely didn’t want that to happen with Wolfs, as this is part of a planned franchise for them. It’s too big to fail if you want to get into clichés.
Yet, it says something when a movie starring Brad Pitt and George Clooney can’t be relied on to deliver big box office, especially given that it’s an action comedy, which isn’t a tough genre to sell. The premise here is good, even if it would be a huge stretch to call it original. Likely, everyone reading this will remember Harvey Keitel playing Winston Wolf in Pulp Fiction, the guy you need to call to get rid of a body. That’s exactly the service both Pitt and Clooney’s characters perform here, with the title, Wolfs, being a nod to QT’s films – apropos given they both come from that world (Pitt is a regular in his movies, while Clooney played his brother in From Dusk Till Dawn).
Both actors play to their strengths here. They’re famous for playing cool and collected, albeit with human touches and a sardonic sense of humour. This served them well in the Ocean’s Trilogy, and Wolfs is very much in the same vein, albeit with a bit of a harder edge. Like those movies, this is a crime caper, but Watts has an R-rating to play with, meaning lots of F-bombs, and some violence.
The stakes in this are deadlier than in the Ocean’s films, with the two fixers called in to dispose of a dead body a wannabe DA (Amy Ryan) has inadvertently ended up with after a one-night stand gone awry. Of course, the guy they’re getting rid of (played by Austin Abrams) isn’t quite dead and happens to be in possession of a quarter million dollars of heroin that’s been stolen from the Albanian mob.
Clooney and Pitt have always had great chemistry, and the film is totally built around this aspect. They’re supposed to hate each other, but the bromance gradually building between the two is palpable, building to a legitimately great finale that calls to mind Newman and Redford in Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid.
Working with a streamer gives Watts more leverage to make this more adult than the Ocean’s movies were, as a PG-13 does not shackle him. Both Clooney and Pitt have fun with their advancing ages, with them having similar bad backs and sharing a bottle of Advil at one point. It also has some great needle drops, with Clooney’s character a fan of Sade, plus a little Phil Collins on the soundtrack never hurt anyone.
While it’s a shame a movie like Wolfs can no longer be assured of a major release, it will likely find an audience on Apple TV Plus. It’s far from the best either Pitt or Clooney has done, but if you look at their combined filmographies, that’s to be expected. This is the two of them having fun, and with a contained setting, it’s a great hangout flick. Watching the two of them do their thing together has always been a blast, and Wolfs is their best as a combo since the original Ocean’s Eleven.
