My guess is that if you printed out all the screenplays and pitches for projects that would reteam George Clooney and Brad Pitt since they last appeared together in a film 16 years ago, you could fill the vault at the Bellagio. I mean, come on, it’s GEORGE CLOONEY and BRAD PITT. Who doesn’t love those guys? How could you not be excited about these two great movie stars sharing the screen once again?
That’s what is so disappointing about the convoluted and half-baked “Wolfs.” For 45 minutes or so, we’re willing to look past the clunky pacing and the plot holes, mostly because Pitt and Clooney still effortlessly exude Grade A Movie Star charisma. Eventually, though, the arbitrary developments wear us down. Seemingly major characters are introduced, only to vanish from the storyline. There’s a lot of talk about warring factions, including “Croatians” and “Albanians,” but that’s about as much as we ever learn about them: They’re Croatians and Albanians. The cynical nature of the project reaches its nadir when a lead character holds up a can of product placement soda and slurps it down in exaggerated fashion.
Perhaps the most egregious offense: a moment that either assumes you’re unaware of a classic buddy film, or you ARE familiar with it and you’ll consider this a homage rather than a rip-off. It feels like the latter.
The film begins in somewhat promising, Hitchcockian fashion, when we hear a blood-curdling scream emanating from the penthouse of a glitzy new Manhattan hotel. Amy Ryan’s Margaret, a tough-on-crime district attorney running for reelection, is in a state of near shock — blouse stained with blood, shards of glass all over the bedroom, and an unconscious, perhaps dead, undressed young man lying face down on the floor. She dials a special number reserved only for extreme emergencies, and a few minutes later, a coolly efficient, leather jacket-wearing Clooney (known in the credits only as “Margaret’s Man”) shows up and begins sizing up the situation. He is a fixer.
Margaret’s Man — let’s call him MM — goes to work, but soon there’s another knock on the door, and in walks another coolly efficient, leather jacket-wearing fixer, who was summoned by the hotel’s owner: Brad Pitt, aka “Pam’s Man,” so let’s call him PM.
It’s as if Mr. Wolf from “Pulp Fiction” suddenly found himself confronted with a Mr. Polar Bear or some such fellow. Each of these veteran, world-weary, lone-wolf (hence the strained title) operatives thought they were the only ones doing this kind of work.
Forced to partner up on this job for reasons that won’t become clear until much later on, they immediately clash as they observe and critique the other’s methodology. PM keeps cracking wise about MM’s advanced years, though they’re only a few years apart. One guy calls the other a “d—-,” and the other guy calls him a “putz.” There’s a running gag about age catching up with them; they both have back problems, and they both have to pull out “cheaters” to read the phone number on a pager. Stuff like that.
After Margaret is sent home and out of the movie, PM discovers a backpack in the hotel room that’s filled with four bricks of a new, extra-powerful, heroin-like substance. Uh-oh. Looks like the not-quite-dead kid (played by Austin Abrams and known only as “Kid”) is a drug mule, and somebody powerful and deadly is going to be looking for their stash.
There’s a stop in Chinatown, where they enlist the services of the obligatory Underground Doctor Who Patches Up Criminals (Pooma Jagannathan). The now-revived Kid provides comedic relief from the backseat. (Austin Abrams is terrific in a scene-stealing role.) At one point we’re at the wedding reception for a mobster’s daughter, where AM and PM find themselves participating in a celebration dance number in a scene that’s so bonkers it almost works.
Writer-director Jon Watts helmed the Tom Holland-starring “Spider-Man” trilogy, and he knows how to stage some entertaining set pieces, including an extended chase sequence that includes a fantastic slow-motion flip. Still, “Wolfs” serves as a reminder of better films in this general genre starring Clooney and/or Pitt, including of course Steven Soderbergh’s masterful “Ocean’s 11” (and the sequels, to a lesser degree). We think of Clooney as a fixer in “Michael Clayton.” Clooney as an assassin in “The American.” Pitt as a middleman in “The Counselor.” Pitt as an assassin in “Bullet Train.” Heck, this film makes “Mr. and Mrs. Smith” look like Nick and Nora Charles.
In emphasizing broad comedy over a blend of sly laughs and genuine, high-stakes action and intrigue, “Wolfs” lowers the stakes. Not even the star power of Clooney and Pitt can elevate this beyond the level of a passable, disposable thriller.