Vying for reelection, DA Margaret (Amy Ryan), known for being tough on crime, finds her bid in jeopardy when a fling with a younger man (Austin Abrams) – who is not a prostitute – turns fatal.  She calls a number she had been given by a trusted contact some time prior, and soon after, a man (George Clooney) arrives at the penthouse suite to clean up the mess and make sure the events of the evening cannot be linked back to Margaret. While working, another knock and another man (Brad Pitt) arrives. He was brought to the scene to protect the elite image of the newly opened hotel.  With two opposing methodologies, the rival fixers butt heads over how to clear both Margaret and the Hotel, but when the young man wakes up, the simple scrubbing of an accidental death becomes a much bigger task. 

Jon Watts writes and directs Wolfs, a buddy crime comedy released by Sony theatrically, but destined to sit behind the walled garden of Apple TV.  Coming off the high of the Tom Holland-led Spiderman trilogy, Watts crafts a comedy that is classically minded featuring two stars who each have their own luster, but it falls victim to modern pacing and delivery so that this romp does not quite have the energy to reach the Soderbergh-ian heights which is set out to reach.  Clocking in at 108 minutes, the film feels a touch stagnant as it spends almost the first 30 minutes in the hotel room, but once it gets moving, the constant changing of the goalposts begins to set the film up like a bit of a farce.  It does run the risk of overcomplicating itself at times, especially towards the end, but Watts manages to also inject a bit of heart in the latter acts so that we do not become bored with the film.

In the first corner is Clooney, filling the role of the aged master of his craft who still is at the top of the game after all these years.  He is hardly stretching as an actor here because much of the writing – and the same is true for Pitt – is based around the fact that it is these specific actors sharing the screen and saying these lines.  There is a winking nature about the comedy that fills much of the first act while the two fixers are in the hotel room that is grating and one-note.  It is the same chummy timbre that affects the Marvel films and therefore poisons the well as all the studios scramble to mimic instead of organically create.  Even though Watts’ web-slinger was a joint production with Sony, he spent a lot of time close to the heart of the beast and it clearly rubbed off on his writing.  Clooney, like many actors of his generation who have found themselves at one time or another trapped in CGI spandex armor, really struggles to hit the comic beats because it is so simple-minded and broad that they can not build up to the punch line because there hardly is a punch line to even work towards.   

As for Pitt, he fares a little bit better because his character is framed as the more reckless one so he can have a little more fun instead of constantly being a stick in the mud.  He is still a little too old to be playing this kind of chaos agent role, and though the film is self-aware enough to realize this and address it, it is not so self-aware that they should have cast a much younger actor opposite Clooney to really make this war of opinions work.  Even with more to work with, Pitt struggles here to really move the needle or captivate audiences the way he used to.  Again, is it that he is beginning to fade?  Unlikely.  And it is not so much that he was failed by the material, but rather in the execution of the material, in which no one comes out of this film unscathed. 

The film is not just a two-hander, though, rather it is a trio that makes their way deep into the underbelly of the wintery city.  The Kid, as Abrams is credited, turns out was merely stunned, not dead, from his topple off of the bed and into the glass bar cart. He wakes up in a panic as June (Poorna Jagannathan) administers a shot of adrenaline to his heart and the resulting midnight chase is passingly amusing, but it wears out its welcome much like the chicken fights in Family Guy; too long, too singular, and worst of all, it does not move the plot forward.  Thankfully, when he is picked back up by the fixers, Abrams does rather well in the herculean task of playing the third wheel to Clooney and Pitt.  He adds a bit of extra flair and some raw energy to the film that starts out as someone just kind of happy to be along for the ride – and, to be fair, who wouldn’t be – but he also opens the film up to some sentimentality and heart, late in the third act.  To the less generous audience, it is far too little too late, but that Watts opts to inject any heart into this film at all is to be admired; it is just a shame that it is not better.  With a little extra care on the page, he could have elevated this film’s simple concept into something great like how Alexander Payne took The Holdovers (2023) – similarly old-fashioned, but certainly not dusty – and made it something of an instant classic.

While the film was crafted in a way that scratches a nostalgic itch for Ocean’s Eleven (2001) and the run of films which its success spawned, as the saying goes, they don’t make ‘em like they used to and Wolfs is no exception.  The most glaring example is that so much of the film is shot like a commercial for BMW as Larkin Seiple‘s camera captures the streetlights reflecting off the sleek body of the shiny, black car or holds tight on its turn signal as Clooney whips it around the alleys of a conveniently empty New York City at night. The sad part is that these sequences do not look out of place in the film, and it is not because their composition has been elevated but because the rest of the film has been cobbled down to look like a commercial. Another example is that the bright red and crisp white of a Coca-Cola has seldom looked so refreshing until Pitt cracks one open in the hotel, or later it sits in the center of a diner table, untouched, but still prominently framed. This approach makes the film feel like television which opens audiences to the temptation to scroll, and with its uncomplicated and segmented approach to the story, Wolfs is very friendly towards the second screen almost as if it was designed to be seen in soft focus over the edge of a tablet, laptop, or phone. 

 Wolfs feels almost like a Spy vs. Spy cartoon in that Clooney and Pitt’s characters, working vaguely against each other, never reveal their names, and truth be told, we do not really even notice it until the film plays it off as one of the final jokes.  It is enjoyable in the moment, but never quite shakes the feeling that it is missing something.  Depending on what an individual audience member is looking for, the film could be missing some more definition in its characters, a more sensible plot, or some more thought and care taken in the look of the film.  On the page and in the direction, it is clear that Watts understands the rules of comedy, and Andrew Weisblum in the edit has great timing, but neither seem to be having any fun or trying to test the limits of these rules.  Their stringent adhesion means that we see these jokes play out and know that they are funny, but seldom end up laughing because we do not find them genuine.  It makes for a perfectly pleasant, perfectly smooth, perfectly forgettable film that is, well, perfect for streaming.