Remember when pure, good old star power used to drive a movie and the prospect of having two headlining stars go head to head on a charisma face off was enough to make audiences positively salivate in anticipation? Jon Watts sure does and with the slightly awkwardly titles Wolfs, he’s hoping to bring back that slick, breezy dynamic that hasn’t been around much since the 90s.
In fact, in order to really nail this aim home, the man who brought Spider-Man home to the MCU no less than three times has gotten no less than Brad Pitt and George Clooney back together to portray two rivals who work in the high-stress business of professional body disposal in the hope of getting those old sparks sparking once again.
But can ridiculous amounts of charm, smoldering looks and perfectly timed asides manage to resurrect the kind of film that doesn’t seem to get the glossy treatment it once did?
Ever had one of those nights when you’re a prominent woman running for the job of District Attorney and the young man you’ve decided to pull in a hotel bar suddenly falls off the bed of your expensive room and lies there, dead, in a pile of broken glass and blood? Sure you do, we’ve all had nights like that, right – however, unlike the rest of us, the panicking Margaret has a phone number that can hopefully make all this trouble vanish in a single night…
Enter Jack, a veteran proffesional fixer who promptly arrives to clean up this damaging situation with a minimum of fuss, but as he’s walking Margaret through the motions of how he’s going to aid her, there’s a knock on the door that turns out to be Nick; a middle-aged proffesional fixer who has been hired by the owner of the hotel (who has been watching via CCTV) to clean up the same mess. While this would be pretty damn awkward in any situation, things are made even more uncomfortable by the fact that despite doing the exact same job, neither Nick or Jack had any idea the other existed and both thought they were the only guy who can do what they do.
The hotel owner decrees that both will have to work together in order to clear away the kid’s body in order to ensure that no shifty shenanigans occur and so we move into stage one of all buddy comedies as the two men struggle to work together while utterly despising the existence of the other. However, suddenly having to work with a partner turns out to be the least of Nick and Jack’s worries as the evening delivers a seemingly unending string of counter missions to conquer if they are ever to call this fiasco a night. The most urgent one is that the kid – surprise, surprise – isn’t actually dead at all; and from here, things get ever more dangerous because if the two fixers are spotted together in the same place at the same time, it could mean a violent reaction from the local criminal community.
Those expecting a fast paced crime romp when settling down to watch Wolfs may need to check their expectations at the door as it soon becomes apparent from the rather deliberate pace that Watts has something a little different in mind. You see, the director who chose to revamp Spider-Man with the conventions of an 80’s high school movie and who has a Star Wars series on the way that seemingly is giving us The Goonies in a galaxy far, far away seems to want to revisit the cool, slick crime flicks of the 90s that would get untold mileage out of how absolutely fucking cool your leads were as they bickered and bantered with the kind of razor sharp retorts you couldn’t possibly hope to think up on the fly in real life. To double down on this, Watts has managed to recruit a couple of veterans of this genre by employing both George Clooney and Brad Pitt to essentially swagger their way through stressful scenarios while displaying an ungodly amount of charm for just under two hours. In some ways, it feels very much like an extention of Ocean’s Eleven (which ironically was released in 2001) or even Out Of Sight in the way it treats its characters as they’re forced to accept that their skills aren’t quite as unique as they once thought they were while trying not to show it on their unfeasibly cool surfaces.
Wolfs manages to do this rather well with both Clooney and Pitt digging into their older selves and revamping that old chemistry they’ve showed in the past while Watts creates a low contrast world around them that causes their black clothes to virtually blend into the background as thin, white snow trickles through the air. However, it seems that the director is a little bit too enamoured of his leading men as the set up of the film isn’t exactly what you’d call high energy.
Trying to be resistant to the modern school of comedy/thriller filmmaking that demands that your slick concept is required to move at the speed of Usain Bolt with a rocket up his back entrance, Watts keeps things slow and deliberate – which is fine, but without the slickness of a Steven Soderbergh or the zippy banter of a Shane Black it’s missing the punchiness necessary to make the jokes land as the plot gets ever more complex. It’s great that a filmmaker is trying to fight against tiktok created audience ADD by giving us a film that’s so deliberately paced it takes them nearly thirty minutes to get out of the fucking hotel, but even when the plot attempts to shift into high gear with a foot chase involving Austin Abrams delirious Kid sprinting through the city streets wearing nothing but his underwear and socks soon after his miraculous resurrection seems oddly laconic when it should be absurdly hilarious.
Still, despite a speed that makes a sloth with sciatica seem relatively perky, Wolfs proves to be admittedly fun if you can adjust to the tone while resisting the urge to lunge for your phone. Clooney and Pitt still work great together, firing up that old double act short hand that means they can accurately display whole pages worth of dialogue in a single impatient look and the film even starts to trip into Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid territory as the snark and barbs inevitably melt away in the third act.
Still, any complains about that thoughtful tone will instantly be deflected by the news that Apple TV+ has already called for a sequel which means the sober quirkiness that Watts has brought will get another outing.
Fun, but hardly essential, Wolfs will not doubt inspire some warm feelings in those that miss the wiseass smoothness of a classy 90s crime comedy that goes down like a hit of pricey bourbon. Watts, Clooney and Pitt have proved Hollywood can still make them like they used to – but regrettably they can’t make them better than they used to…
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