There are movie stars and there are movie stars, and then there are movie stars who can take average material and elevate it into something genuinely entertaining.
In Wolfs, a high-powered district attorney finds herself in a hotel room with a young man who’s dropped dead. She needs this problem to go away, so she calls a fixer, a man who takes care of problems, a man who assures her she has nothing to worry about because this is what he does, and there’s no one else who can do what he does. Then, there’s a knock at the door, and another man arrives, another fixer, this one hired by the hotel, which has been spying on the DA’s room, and which has no interest in the bad publicity this all might bring on it. So now we have two fixers, both of whom claim no one else can do what they do, and who must now work together to solve the problem.
It's a fun set-up, and writer-director Jon Watts makes it work reasonably well for a while, as the two men end up in a bigger mess than they realized and try to figure it all out. The filmmaking is shiny and slick, and there are some cute sight gags based around how the characters are situated in the frame and the gestures they make. It’s also all maybe a bit too pleased with itself—Watts’s running joke is basically that these guys have trouble being buddies instead of lone wolves, and also that they’re both past their prime, even if they’re still highly competent, and this joke gets more or less repeated a bit too often. And everything gets far too convoluted and messy for what this movie really needed, even feeling toward the end like there might have been some scenes left on the cutting room floor that would have smoothed it all out a bit.
But what I haven’t mentioned, although you may already know (especially if you’re reading this instead of listening to it and you’ve seen the accompanying image), is that the two fixers are played by George Clooney and Brad Pitt, two all-caps MOVIE STARS if we’ve ever had them, and two actors who’ve worked together enough that they know each other’s rhythms and tendencies, and in their hands Wolfs is a whole lot more fun than it might have been even with good B-list talent filling these roles. Their charisma is undeniable, but they also know how to toss away jokes instead of punching them, how to use their star power when it’s to their advantage, and how to subvert that same power when the scene calls for it. These guys are pro-fessionals, and it’s nothing but a joy to watch them work.
Wolfs is on Apple TV+ September 27th.
