Get a couple movie stars and a decent writer/director. It can be that simple. Jon Watts lives up to his last name, bringing the star wattage to Wolfs, his first post Spiderman outing. While Tom Holland became a star over those films, sometimes its just easier to work with seasoned vets like George Clooney and Brad Pitt, who can do comedy capers in their sleep, and you just get out of the way and make the script/action as fun as possible for them.
In the early AM hours at a fancy hotel, we hear glass break and a scream. We learn the screamer is a District Attorney, Margaret (Amy Ryan) and a kid (Austin Abrams) has passed out, covered in blood, dripping over a broken glass table. Desperate and panicked, Margaret calls a cryptic number, answered by a mysterious man (George Clooney), who claims to be the only fixer/cleaner/wolf who can get rid of problems for people… or so Margaret and the man think, because after 20 minutes, fixer/cleaner/wolf #2 (Brad Pitt) shows up, forcing man #1 into a tentative alliance with this interloper on his turf.
The success of this film rides on George Clooney and Brad Pitt sniping at each other doing some sort of criminal activity. Since the pair starred in the best version of that type of movie, they’re perfectly at home in Wolfs. Most of the movie’s best moments are the two quietly stewing, hoping to get in the next great moment to oneup the other. They can do it wordlessly (like during a crazy wedding celebration) or chatterboxy (during an interrogation), or both at the same time (the great hotel room sequence). Doesn’t matter. When you’ve been entertaining as long as Pitt and Clooney have, this type of charismatic banter just comes naturally to them at this point. Watts’s material is just good enough to keep this movie on the right side of entertaining on a comedic level.
As for the story, Watts goes with the standard assassin/drug conspiracy tale. At least the director varies up the locations in the dead of night New York locales just enough to up the excitement level when it starts to lag. The rest of the cast knows what they signed up for and ably supports the dynamic duo. Austin Abrams comes out the best: the linchpin character that the audience slowly grows attached to, courageously sacrificing himself on the alter of dignity for the sake of some of the best jokes in Wolfs. Poorna Jagnnathan rightly gets a fun 10 minute part to play off these two movie legends, and holds her own against them amusingly so. And Amy Ryan and Zlatko Buric are always welcome when they appear in something.
That’s about it. And frankly, as we approach the heavy hitting fare of Oscar bait, Wolfs is a nice little appetizer of fun. Let’s do more Ocean’s meet ups. But not like the Instigators. Never like the Instigators, bleh, that was a waste.