Old Wolves, New Tricks: Clooney and Pitt Shine in ‘Wolfs’
Photo Courtesy of GQ
The times of a packed movie theater have become a drift of a memory for some, but watching George Clooney and Brad Pitt in Wolfs serves as a reminder of a time that has yet to go away.
The public's expectations of the film might have been lower than when Pitt appeared in Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon a Time in Hollywood opposite Leonardo DiCaprio. This can be due to the lack of clarity in not knowing whether Wolfs would be a straight-to-streaming film. Getting the same amount of live TV trailer space as the atrocity of Matt Damon and Casey Affleck's The Instigators, the public did not have enough to grab onto besides seeing another pair of A-List stars scooped up by a streaming service.
Wolfs is written and directed by John Watts, who had previously directed Marvel's Spider-Man: Homecoming, Spider-Man: Far From Home, and two episodes of FX's The Old Man. The film opens up with Margaret (Amy Ryan), a powerhouse NYC Attorney, scrambling for her phone in a New York City Hotel Penthouse with a dead young man on the floor. Margaret quickly locates a number on her phone for someone she knows can eliminate this mess. And then Margarets Man (George Clooney)is introduced and informed on the situation and arrives at the penthouse. And as Margaret and one of the Wolfs talk, the audience meets another Wolf (Brad Pitt) hired by the Hotel Manager Pam who caught the incident on camera and sent Pitt in. Then Pam informs the gentleman that they will have to work together.
The whole 'Gotcha' sequence between Pam's Man and Margaret's Man at the beginning of the film was shaky in Watts' mind. Still, it works enough with the idea that George Clooney and Brad Pitt have never met before and are forced to work together despite their dislike for each other. The concept is funny, creating a lofty tension between the two leads and setting up the rest of the story.
Pam's Man and Margaret's Man share the same code of ethics regarding a man's keeping his word and loyalty. These character values clash throughout the film, and their characters' headstrong, stubborn personalities also get in the way of working together until the film's end. Noble qualities in a man were displayed well in Clooney and Pitt performances.
As Clooney ages, it might be difficult for him to play someone like Danny Ocean. So, to take on a character who is a bit rough around the edges with back problems and less of a 'laissez-faire' attitude and more by the book, Clooney convinced audiences he's an old Wolf. Imagine a scale with one end being Michael Clayton and the other being Danny Ocean. The character of Margaret's Man falls right in the middle of Ryan Bingham from Up in the Air and Harry Pfarrer from Burn After Reading. Clooney's character doesn't have all the answers, nor does he want to be in this line of work anymore, but he has been in it too long to do anything else.
Pam's Man was brought up by a mentor who took on a more aggressive, physical approach to the line of work and was allowed to be messier regarding the job. Brad Pitt was able to balance out Clooney's straightness in his performance, which has been a part of the playbook every time these two share the screen together. And if Pitt's character is forced into working with Margaret's Man, he is not going to break a sweat. He will not reveal all the answers, which is the attitude Pitt pulls off well in this role. Pam's Man has enough substance, and the thought of this character's past is interesting enough to make one wonder where he was before he arrived at the penthouse.
Austin Abrahams as Kid serves as the volley between the dynamic of Clooney and Pitt's characters. Abrahams plays the dead young Man and miraculously awakes towards the end of Act 1 in the film. The role of the 'Kid' is vital to the story and puts the main characters on a crazy journey in one night. For a young actor, Abrahams holds his own against the Hollywood legends and shares some funny scenes, giving the film what it needs to work around as the 'Kid' needs to deliver the drugs to the Croatians before they kill him.
Being the first on the call sheet, Clooney and Pitt blend well, and the two guys are cut from different clothes. They can easily portray the working relationship because they will always be Rusty and Danny from the Oceans films. Those two guys are valuable in their own way, and neither can do the job better, but both need each other to survive. The work relationship from robbing Las Vegas casinos carried over smoothly into the crime world of New York City. Pitt and Clooney do not try to outdo one another in their performances. Conveniently, some writing tricks work for the film, especially when both try to talk simultaneously and over each other, but nobody wins. The film's story is art imitating reality in that these two men are really good at their jobs and cannot admit they are getting old and retirement might be closer than they thought.
The film's plot does not try to do too much. Writer/director Jon Watts keeps the story of Wolfs pretty linear, taking place all in one night. Maybe some loose ends as to why Margaret's Man and Pam's Man are being hunted down by the same boss who wants to kill him can be made clearer, but hopefully, those questions will be answered because Watts has begun working on the second installment of Wolfs.
Watts might have tailored this style of pacing in his writing more towards home viewing and America's new short attention span but managed to leave some scenes only meant to be shown on the big screen, like the foot and car chase sequence between Pitt, Clooney, and Abrahams. And while the action sequence felt longer than it needed to be, it didn't become larger than reality, which most action scenes in contemporary cinema tend to do now. When the story called for violence, Watts managed to keep it minimal, keeping the story as grounded as it should be. Because any more than one round of shots fired from the wolfs would move further from expectations of this caliber of Man.
While watching the film, there are a few instances where it feels like a Super Bowl Commercial with George Clooney and Brad Pitt teasing a new movie together. Maybe this is partially due to not knowing enough about the characters or the scenes where Pitt and Clooney sit and share the Advil placed out of the BMW's glove box or when Pitt sips out of a Coca-Cola at the film's beginning.
It is enough for the last of the on-screen legends to make Wolfs work. There was no ensemble cast for Clooney and Pitt to sneak around in. The film's story and writing hoist up the actors long enough for them not to need to make any more choices to add to the characters. Audiences can expect to be pleased with Wolfs and the additions of George Clooney and Brad Pitt to make it shine in their filmography. When a film with this star power draw comes out, it's always worth it to think of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid when Redford and Newman set the stage and showed two masters of the cinematic space can come together to make a piece of art.
Wolfs makes its streaming debut on Apple TV+ on September 27th after its theatrical release.
But go see it in theaters.
Rating: 4.5/5
