Wolfs is a Sleek Star Vehicle on Autopilot
George Clooney and Brad Pitt’s charisma can only take you so far.
What happens when you get the two most charismatic people alive together in a movie? You build an ensemble of equally cool guys around them, and turn it into a slick, star-powered heist franchise. But with Steven Soderbergh’s Ocean’s Eleven crew dissolved, could George Clooney and Brad Pitt recapture the magic all on their twosome? Not really.
Wolfs, the new movie from Spider-Man: No Way Home director Jon Watts, is a breezy, effortlessly funny action caper powered by the crackling charisma of Clooney and Pitt — until it’s not. Watts, in his first film outside of the Marvel Cinematic Universe since 2015’s Cop Car, relies too heavily on the natural charisma of his leads, who settle into a familiar rhythm that starts to get tired when the movie runs out of plot. But there’s something to say about the power of Clooney and Pitt’s chemistry that you don’t much mind spending a couple hours with them as they bicker, even as the film takes too much time spinning its wheels.
Wolfs opens on a peaceful shot of New York City at night, until we suddenly hear a glass breaking and a woman screaming. Inside an anonymous hotel room is Margaret (Amy Ryan), clad in blood-soaked lingerie. The blood belongs to a half-naked young man dubbed “Kid” (Austin Abrams), who crashed through a glass table.
Margaret, a district attorney, can’t have the body connected to her, and in a panic she calls a mysterious number on her phone, begging the other person on the line for help. He gives her specific instructions: close the windows, call no one else, and sit and wait for him. Jack (George Clooney) soon arrives to clean up the mess… as does Brad Pitt’s Nick, who the hotel hired to do the same job. Forced to work together, the two of them embark on what appears to be a routine clean-up of an anonymous nobody, until they find his backpack filled with several kilos of coke. Also, he isn’t quite dead.
Clooney and Pitt, reunited for the first time since Ocean's Thirteen and Burn After Reading, are magic together every second they’re on screen, proving you can’t replicate their particular brand of movie-star charisma. Watts is intensely aware of this, dedicating as many scenes to their lazy bickering as possible. But Clooney and Pitt’s impeccable chemistry can only carry the momentum for so long before you notice there isn’t much movie to this movie.
Wolfs throws a handful of wrenches into Jack and Nick’s plans, but most of the conflict rests in them having to deal with their wounded pride when they realize they aren’t unique. When the Kid points out that they’re basically the same person right down to how they dress and speak, it sends both of them spiraling for so long they nearly miss the next plot point. And therein lies the film’s biggest flaw: Wolfs is about moving Clooney and Pitt from point A to point B without much regard for the characters or their stories. They’re simply uber-charismatic action figures that Watts, as writer and director, can put into increasingly absurd scenarios. It fills the rest of the movie outside of Clooney and Pitt with dead air, which feels like a waste of their talents.
George Clooney and Brad Pitt’s professional fixers try to squeeze information out of the Kid (Austin Abrams).
Austin Abrams, who gets the most screentime apart from the starring duo, dutifully plays the annoying, snot-nosed sidekick, his pure ignorance of the danger he’s in engendering a strangely paternal feeling from Jack and Nick. But while Abrams does his best with what’s on the page, he can’t quite wedge himself into the dazzling dynamic Clooney and Pitt already have established, leaving him to feel like an interloper. Poorna Jagannathan is similarly enjoyable as the illicit doctor Jack and Nick share, but she’s gone before we really get to know her.
Wolfs, despite its brief theatrical release and the high-powered wattage of its movie stars, feels tailor-made for streaming. It’s a movie destined to be forgotten outside of a handful of genuinely terrific scenes between its two leads, which will inevitably make their way to a YouTube compilation titled “Coolest Brad Pitt and George Clooney Scenes.” For now, though, Wolfs is the prime example of a star vehicle stuck on autopilot.
