Explosive
Summary
Wolfs is a low-key, well executed flick starring and showcasing two movie stars. It doesn’t ask them to stretch much or break new ground but it’s a fun watch.
Plot: A professional fixer (George Clooney) shows up to handle a grisly scene involving a prominent public figure. When a second fixer (Brad Pitt) arrives, the two are forced to team up and uncover something larger in the New York underworld.
Review: Currently playing in limited release is Apple’s shiny reteam of two beloved movie stars of their generation, George Clooney and Brad Pitt. Written and Directed by Jon Watts (Cop Car, the Tom Holland Spider-Man movies), the project started a bidding war with the trio attached. Apple won out and initially planned a large theatrical release before hitting streaming (a la their Argyle and Napoleon) but after a global whirlwind of press, the release was scaled back to a weeklong engagement before the film drops on Apple+ Friday, September 27th.
If you’re a fan of either actor, you should enjoy Wolfs, a lightweight but not hollow look at fixers and aging with touches of heart and morality thrown in. Taking place mainly at night in the alleys and backstreets of New York, Chinatown and rundown neighborhoods, the flick looks great, sleek and expensive. Clooney and Pitt’s unnamed fixers dress and speak similarly while Clooney is the more levelheaded one and Pitt the hotter head. They don’t want to tell each other how they do their work, afraid the other will copy. They know the same underworld people and have almost crossed paths on previous jobs.
There’s frequent humor, more on the smile than laugh out loud side as the two bicker and find themselves deeper in their unfolding job, crime and gangsters. You get some foot and car chases on the cold and snowy streets and surprisingly there’s some gunplay in a warehouse, 80’s style. Clooney and Pitt aren’t quite Paul Newman and Robert Redford in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid but they have terrific chemistry as already witnessed in the Ocean’s Eleven trilogy. Playing off their age (bad backs, snow in the beards), the two still come across confident, fit and cool as hell.
The buddy crime thriller doesn’t stray too far from what you’d expect and ventures into buddy action movie territory towards the end. Wolfs doesn’t coast off the wattage of its stars and doesn’t waste their talents but there seemed to be room to make it odder, edgier and more memorable. Perfectly suitable for a Friday night stream when you feel like staying in and not thinking too much.
