Wolfs almost seems like a parody of a lot of things: fixer thrillers, money-burning Apple Originals, Brad Pitt and George Clooney cinematic bro-outs. But just as writer/director Jon Watts’ movie is about to land one of its punchlines, it’ll fumble the bag, distracted either by one of its other tongue-in-cheek preoccupations or by antithetical pulls towards sincerity and logic. Wolfs becomes, then, an experience as contradictory as its plural-but-not title. It’s a star vehicle intent on dulling its leads’ shine, a slick blockbuster relying on narrative and visual restrictions, a cynical movie about the power of friendship. And yet, even as Wolfs undermines itself, it’s a charmingly prickly (or charming, despite its prickliness) mess.
And cleaning up complicated messes is where Wolfs’ lone wolf leads come in. George Clooney and Brad Pitt play unnamed fixers in cool leather jackets, which means that we mainly think of them as “George Clooney” and “Brad Pitt.” (Which is part of the point.) They’re both called up to the same blood-soaked hotel room, where a dead teen, a district attorney (Amy Ryan), and a couple bricks of heroin await their expertise. Only, as per the rules of this character archetype, they work alone.
Forced to work with a professional peer, the two balk and complain and snipe at one another. Clooney growls and grumbles while Pitt kicks his feet up and smugly smirks. Apart from Watts’ amusing premise, his gags often feel like underwritten hate-riffing—the kind of repetitive, sluggishly cut, “keep going until it’s funny” ball-busting that stretches out the runtimes of Judd Apatow films.
It’s also not something Clooney and Pitt, two of the most charismatic men to grace the big screen, excel at. Their tough underworld pros struggle to suppress the snappy back-and-forth rhythm that helps drive the Ocean’s movies, and struggle further to bury their magnetism beneath the script’s muttered bickering. The awkward unpleasantness isn’t just awkward and unpleasant to sit through, but noticeably forced; the tonal equivalent of those baseball caps celebrities use to half-heartedly disguise their otherworldly beauty.
This oppressive atmosphere remains mostly confined to the film’s exhausting first act, before Wolfs expands beyond its penthouse suite and allows its scope to broaden from the simple sketch premise of its opening. As Clooney and Pitt get to move around, their characters growing closer as they see the silly contrivances of the plot through the prototypical genre bullet points (an underground doctor, a car chase, an interrogation, a shootout), the film begins abandoning its arrogant subversive streak. The jokes become warmer, the star power notches up its brightness from dark mode to—at the very least—a power-saver setting, and the camera exhales, freed from the stagnant hotel air.