Wolfs review – it’s con­tent, not cinema

The dis­cus­sion around whether or not we’ve run out of bonafide movie stars seems to reoc­cur every few months with­in the film indus­try, usu­al­ly linked to whichev­er bright young thing is light­ing up the screen or what­ev­er build­ing Tom Cruise has thrown him­self off on any giv­en week­day. Naysay­ers claim that the indus­try is in a charis­ma cri­sis, and that very few actors are capa­ble of trad­ing on name recog­ni­tion alone. Even once bank­able names aren’t bring­ing in the big bucks like they used to. But if there were ever two stars with the pow­er to get bums on seats, it’s Brad Pitt and George Clooney, reli­ably enter­tain­ing and effort­less­ly charis­mat­ic screen per­sonas (the less said about Clooney the direc­tor the better).

They’ve been friends for years, star­ring in the Ocean’s fran­chise on three occa­sions, but it’s now 16 years since they last worked togeth­er (on the Coen Broth­ers’ zip­py caper Burn After Read­ing) and in that time the film land­scape has altered dra­mat­i­cal­ly. Case in point: Apple TV+ – found­ed in 2019 – financed Wolfs, the new non-IP project from Spi­der-Man direc­tor Jon Watts (though a sequel is already in the works, so it’s become IP) and both Clooney and Pitt put mon­ey back into the project to sup­port a the­atri­cal release rather than a straight-to-stream­ing roll-out, indi­cat­ing both actors still clear­ly believe in the spec­ta­cle and val­ue of the cin­e­ma expe­ri­ence. (That this would need to hap­pen seems absurd giv­en that Watts’ Spi­der-Man tril­o­gy earned Sony a cool $4 bil­lion, but this is where we’re at in Hol­ly­wood I guess!)

Wolfs – refer­ring to both the lone wolf mantra of its co-leads, but inci­den­tal­ly a nod to Pulp Fiction’s famous fix­er Win­ston Wolf – sees Watts take a bring from Sony’s web-sling­ing cash cow, as New York DA Mar­garet (Amy Ryan) finds her­self in an unfor­tu­nate bind one night and pre­vails on a mys­te­ri­ous stranger (George Clooney) to come to her hotel suite and fix it. There’s just one snag – the hotel’s own­er, Pam, is aware of what’s hap­pened and also sends a guy to clean up the sit­u­a­tion (Brad Pitt). Margaret’s Man and Pam’s Man are indig­nant, respond­ing to the notion they work togeth­er with all the enthu­si­asm of two small chil­dren forced to do group work with a kid they don’t like.

There’s noth­ing par­tic­u­lar­ly tax­ing about the plot of Wolfs, which unfolds in a pre­dictable man­ner as Clooney and Pitt bick­er their way through their reluc­tant assign­ment. Margaret’s mess proves much hard­er to clean up than either of them expect­ed when they dis­cov­er a large quan­ti­ty of hero­in in her room and are inad­ver­tent­ly tasked with return­ing it to its own­er (explained away blithe­ly as the Alban­ian mob). While the mys­te­ri­ous fin­er details of Clooney and Pitt’s char­ac­ters are will­ful­ly obscured on account of their guard­ed pro­fes­sion­al­ism, it’s a shame that the film paints in such broad strokes more wide­ly, as this doesn’t leave much room for sub­stan­tial char­ac­ter devel­op­ment or emo­tion­al investment.

There are a lot of riffs about Pitt and Clooney get­ting on in years too, like them hav­ing bad backs, or need­ing to wear read­ing glass­es to inspect a piece of paper, which nat­u­ral­ly have dimin­ish­ing returns. Watts’ sense of humour is fair­ly mun­dane, and while there are some occa­sion­al­ly fun quips, the script doesn’t offer much with­in itself, instead rely­ing on its star wattage to do the heavy lift­ing. Pitt’s per­for­mance doesn’t feel par­tic­u­lar­ly off-piste – we’ve seen him play qui­et­ly con­fi­dent, hyper-com­pe­tent pro­fes­sion­als before – but Clooney, con­sid­er­ably grumpi­er than he usu­al­ly appears on screen, is quite delight­ful, and although the pair’s real-life friend­ship might impede their believ­abil­i­ty as two strangers who take an imme­di­ate dis­like to one anoth­er, there’s cer­tain­ly a sen­sa­tion of being in a safe pair of hands.

Still, it’s hard to not imag­ine what a more inter­est­ing film­mak­er might be able to do with this clas­sic odd cou­ple set-up, as Watts plays it safe to the point of induc­ing bore­dom. Some­thing about Wolfs feels too pol­ished, too cor­po­rate in its exe­cu­tion, with the smooth metal­lic sheen of a brand-new iPhone. It’s con­tent, not cin­e­ma, even with two stars at the helm.