‘Wolfs’ Review: George Clooney and Brad Pitt Shine in Jon Watts’ Mixed Thriller
George Clooney and Brad Pitt keep the charm and fun moving in Jon Watts’ Wolfs, even if the movie itself offers mixed results.
It doesn’t take long for Jon Watts’ latest directorial effort, Wolfs, to find its groove. Watts, who also wrote the movie, knows exactly what it takes for this crime thriller to be semi-successful, requiring only the natural chemistry of George Clooney and Brad Pitt to keep us invested throughout its 108-minute runtime. Clooney’s introduction in the movie as a nameless fixer on his way to help a New York politician (Amy Ryan) after an incident occurred feels like the type of buildup you’d see in an Indian film, first by only hearing his voice, then coming out of a telephone booth to reveal his face and demeanor. It’s the type of stuff you’d usually see from Shah Rukh Khan, meticulously building up his total arrival in the movie for rapturous applause by an audience welcoming their idol to the screen again.
We then peer into his psyche for just a bit as he drives around in his car listening to Sade’s No Ordinary Love, perusing the city like a protagonist inside a Grand Theft Auto video game. The Sade needle drop may be a bit too on-the-nose (Smooth Operator eventually acts as the film’s musical leitmotiv). However, it’s also playful in how Clooney has always preferred playing smooth operators throughout his illustrious career, from Danny Ocean in Steven Soderbergh’s Ocean’s Trilogy to even Mr. Fox in Wes Anderson’s Fantastic Mr. Fox. He has an affable sense of charm that always pops off the screen and makes us invested into whatever he’s doing – the rare type of thing we see nowadays in Hollywood that screams MOVIE STAR from the minute they appear in their respective films.
Pitt, on the other hand, comedically appears as another fixer assigned to do the same job, putting on his glove and realizing he isn’t alone. Both of these introductions feel perfectly in line with not only the actors’ personality types but also their overall stature in the history of contemporary American cinema. No one exudes more significant allure in the movies than George Clooney and Brad Pitt. Paired together, they’re dynamite, especially in how Soderbergh effectively played their strengths in the Ocean’s trilogy. It’s not hard to compare their chemistry in Wolfs (side note: I vehemently dislike the grammatically incorrect title, but it also gives us a clue on the protagonists we will spend time with) with their work in Ocean’s, because the film feels like a prequel film that recalls how Danny and Rusty met, just like Doug Liman’s The Instigators, another Apple TV+ vehicle, felt like a spinoff for Matt Damon’s Linus and Casey Affleck’s Virgil.
It's also why the movie works so well. Clooney and Pitt respect each other personally but know how to play off themselves in a movie. Their chemistry here is incredibly palpable, and it’s always fun to see them not only argue at each other as one thinks they have the best solution to rid themselves of an overcomplicated problem that grows far more elaborate as the runtime progresses, while the other thinks otherwise. A funny bit sees the two characters attempting to figure out how to make ‘Kid’ (Austin Abrams) talk after he overdosed on large amounts of drugs. Clooney and Pitt each have a ‘guy’ to help them, but they respectively don’t pick up the phone. They eventually agree to see who Pitt deals with, only to realize that they are doing business with the same person (played here by Poorna Jagannathan).
Banter and reveals like these keep the movie flowing with high-octane fun, even as its plot stretches to interminably complex heights inside a poorly defined criminal underworld. Of course, the aura of mystery is intriguing from the start, and Watts smartly ends his movie without us fully knowing who these people are and, more interestingly, their names. It’s best to make the audience think a little bit (though the promise of a sequel may dilute the ending’s impact) instead of handholding them to no end. However, some aspects of the movie require explanation rather than ambiguity, especially when Clooney’s fixer begins to uncover a conspiracy that begins as soon as he steps into that hotel room to help clean up the politician’s mess.
This leads to a turf war between multiple gangs, including one led by Dimitri (Triangle of Sadness’ Zlatko Burić) that feels more like an afterthought than the film’s central conflict, rendering its sole action sequence weightless. It also doesn’t help that Watts has not developed a confident visual style for his picture, emulating Brian De Palma’s split diopter, Michael Mann’s gunfights, and the sleekness and methodical aesthetic of Soderbergh with zero verve. None of his callbacks work, but I particularly enjoyed how cinematographer Larkin Seiple blocks the two lone WOLVES (not WOLFS) inside his frame, which acts like deliberate visual comedy. On the flip side, a slow-motion scene of Austin Abrams’ Kid landing on Clooney’s car is bizarre and not in tune with the sleek form it thinks it adopts (primed by the musical juxtaposition of Sade).
But there’s a metatextual commentary on the stars reaching sixty candles that made me enjoy their playfulness even more. Whether it’s their cracking back or sharing a bottle of Advil before they engage in a gunfight, both Clooney and Pitt are aware of their aging status within Hollywood and recognize the era they currently play in will be the last of their peak stardom. This type of reflexive stance is more common in Indian cinema (hence my comment at the beginning with its patient introduction of the movie’s lead star and Shah Rukh Khan’s current exploration of de-aging from Maneesh Sharma’s Fan to Rajkumar Hirani’s Dunki) than Hollywood, but it’s great to see both actors think about their place in the current studio system as it paves the way for a new generation (this also continues Pitt’s relevancy quest after Damien Chazelle’s Babylon and the upcoming Joseph Kosinski-directed F1, which will also wrestle with the star’s current age).
Such a richly layered metatext warrants the theatrical experience (I went to one of the three cinemas in Canada screening it in IMAX), and it would’ve gotten a wide release had Apple not been such chickens and caved after all of their theatrical-exclusive releases underperformed at the box office. Matthew Vaughn’s Argylle and Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon were never going to be financially successful. You only need to watch the trailer for one and look at the runtime for the other to know that they will be dead on arrival, even if the latter film was well-received (unfortunately, audiences don’t like very long movies). But Wolfs is different – it contains two well-appreciated stars by the masses who are (still) constant box office draw. Apple could’ve had a real hit on their hands, which could’ve given Josh Cooley’s Transformers One fierce competition. However, they will seemingly have to wait until F1 hopefully shows them the light and make them realize the viability of the theatrical experience, which has always stood the test of time no matter the past and current challenges it faces.