Wolfs review: This slight comedy caper is no Ocean’s Fourteen

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On its surface, Wolfs has the potential to be Ocean’s Thirteen and a Half. It marks a long-awaited screen reunion between Brad Pitt and George Clooney, both of whom channel the same best-friends energy into their dueling performances in the film that they did across their three Ocean’s adventures together. There’s a crime element sprinkled in here, too, as the two actors star opposite each other this time as a pair of assassin-cleaners who are forced to team up. But Wolfs is not an Ocean’s Thirteen sequel. While their shine hasn’t dimmed all that much in the 17 years since that film, Clooney and Pitt aren’t the same movie stars that they were in 2007, either.

Clooney’s face is rounder and boasts more character now than in Michael Clayton, and though that’s lessened the wattage of his movie star smile, it’s also emphasized the comedic and dramatic power of his eyes and his almost cartoonishly sharp eyebrows. Pitt’s jawline still looks chiseled out of stone, but in a Robert Redford-esque turn of fate, his face has deepened and relaxed over the years. The two men are, as Wolfs repeatedly reminds us, older. On the one hand, that means they’re slower than they used to be. It also means they’re somehow even more comfortable taking up space onscreen than they were at the start of their careers.

Whether by design or not, Wolfs moves at a slower pace than most crime films, including Pitt and Clooney’s Ocean’s romps. There are lethargic, almost stage play-esque sections of non-action scattered throughout its 108 minutes, and more stretches of pure bickering between its two lead hit men than even its trailers suggests. This would be a problem were the invitation to simply spend time with Clooney and Pitt still not just as alluring now as it’s always been. Wolfs actually works better, however, when it is actively leaning into the hang-out energy between its stars than when it is trying to tie all of the loose threads of its underbaked crime plot together.

Wolfs begins, both due to necessity and a lack of urgency on the part of Spider-Man: No Way Home director Jon Watts, slowly. Its opening minutes follow Margaret (Amy Ryan), a prominent New York City district attorney, as she scrambles to cover up the bloody aftermath of a hook-up-gone-wrong with a younger man (Austin Abrams). Panicked, she calls a mysterious number and shortly thereafter finds a professional fixer (Clooney) knocking on her hotel room door. His efforts to clean up the mess of Margaret’s career-destroying hotel rendezvous are interrupted by the arrival of another, equally confident fixer (Pitt). When it’s revealed that the latter was hired by the hotel’s owner, who watched Margaret’s entire encounter with Abrams’ unnamed young man unfold via a hidden security camera, Pitt and Clooney’s fixers are forced by their bosses to team up and finish the job together.

This sequence, which wears its table-setting nature a bit too proudly on its sleeve, is the prelude to a long, messy night of twists and turns in which Wolfs‘ begrudging partners find themselves with not only with an entire backpack’s worth of illegal drugs to dispose of but also at the center of a dangerous gang war. As they try to make it out of their latest job alive, Clooney and Pitt’s fixers gradually realize just how much they have in common. Their initially icy rapport is thawed to a more playful, open kind of banter by their increasing awareness that they’ve found themselves partnered up with perhaps the one other person in the world who knows what their lone-wolf lifestyle is really like. Clooney and Pitt unsurprisingly navigate this familiar but nonetheless entertaining friendship arc about as easily as Gene Kelly might a dance routine.

There is something wondrous about watching someone who is very good at what they do go to work. Despite the promise of its plot, though, Wolfs fails to really immerse viewers in the world and methods of its fictional seasoned professionals. The film feels torn between indulging in its buddy comedy sensibilities and its desire to tell a complete, linear crime story. Ultimately, the former half of its personality comes out on top. This results in nearly all of its already few action set pieces falling flat and its intended moments of paranoia and tension similarly fizzling out. At the same time, it’s also what clears the way for Clooney and Pitt to give performances that are so naturally charismatic and casually funny that they remind you why they are two of the most beloved performers of the past 30 years. Very few working actors know how to be Movie Stars better than them.

For the most part, Watts stays out of Clooney and Pitt’s way. The director brings the same steady, observant style to Wolfs that he did the first two episodes of FX’s The Old Man. This decision works in tandem with Larkin Seiple’s sharp cinematography to give Wolfs a slick aesthetic that, at its worst, feels a bit too polished. Pitt and Clooney’s faces are never lit as lovingly as they deserve, and Watts’ detached approach to action robs Wolfs‘ set pieces of whatever juice they might have otherwise had. The film looks better than most Apple and Netflix movies, though, and it never feels like Watts has lost control of the crime comedy. (On the contrary, it frequently feels like the movie might be better off if he loosened his grip a little.)

In perhaps his most brilliant directorial stroke, Watts wisely gives Austin Abrams enough space to stand out alongside his towering co-stars. The young actor brings a gangly, slapstick, and unexpectedly sweet energy to Wolfs that jolts some life back into it just when it looks like the film is on the verge of coming to a complete standstill. He’s a small revelation in a film that mostly serves as a reminder of well-known but welcome truths about its two leads’ enduring star power. Wolfs feels unlikely to be remembered as a highlight of Clooney’s or Pitt’s career, and it even ranks low on the list of collaborations between them. But that doesn’t mean it is a failure, let alone a bad time.

As an excuse for its stars to collaborate in front of the camera again, Wolfs actually works well as both a reunion tour and a victory lap. Pitt and Clooney have miraculously managed to hold onto their big-screen appeal for nearly 30 straight years now, and Wolfs — for all of its flaws — makes it abundantly clear why.

Wolfs is playing in select theaters and streaming on Apple TV+ now.