‘Wolfs’ movie review: George Clooney and Brad Pitt turn up the charm for this smooth operation

Jon Watts’ ‘Wolfs,’ starring George Clooney and Brad Pitt, is a laid-back joyride with nostalgic star power.

Director Jon Watts’ latest non-franchise directorial effort, might just be the most low-profile high-profile movie of the year. On paper, it has everything: George Clooney and Brad Pitt — two of a fading breed of  megastars from Hollywood’s golden age of marquee names, who once made us believe that no matter what they were in, we’d buy a ticket just to watch them — share the screen in a quirky caper about professional fixers tasked with cleaning up a botched rendezvous in New York. Yet, much like its aging protagonists, Wolfs feels a little creaky and self-aware. The film leans heavily on the nostalgia of its stars, and while that’s no minor currency, the result feels more like a laid-back joyride than anything truly gripping.

For those expecting something as zippy and sharp as the Ocean’s franchise, Wolfs starts off in that direction but ultimately takes a slower, more meandering path. Clooney and Pitt play two unnamed fixers (though let’s be real, they’re playing themselves) called in by separate clients to handle the fallout of a very messy evening. Amy Ryan is a politician in the midst of an election campaign, who accidentally finds herself with a dead lover and calls Clooney for help. Pitt, hired by the hotel’s owner to keep things quiet, soon arrives, leading to the inevitable: two rival professionals, each touting, “There’s nobody who can do what I do”, forced to work together.

The film leans heavily into their chemistry, which thankfully still has its fair share of spark since their last shared outing in Burn After Reading. Clooney plays it smooth, a relaxed confidence that borders on nonchalance, while Pitt, ever the cheeky counter, hams it up with a sort of scruffy charm. The two riff off each other like two grumpy old men who can’t quite recall why they’re bickering in the first place and it’s this Butch and Sundance-like banter that’s the heartbeat of the film, though with a few more groans over bad backs and aching knees. The problem, however, is that beyond their camaraderie, Wolfs offers little to elevate itself above those which preceded it.

Beneath the surface, Wolfs feels more like an excuse to revel in their chemistry than a fully-fledged story. Watts, who previously helmed the web-slinging trilogy of Marvel’s Spiderman, seems content to let the Clooney-Pitt duo carry the film, relying on their charisma to mask the thinness of the plot. And for a while, it works. You’ll find yourself smiling at Clooney’s smirking self-assuredness and Pitt’s goofy bravado.

But the film never fully sheds its reliance on its leads and functions as a love letter to the era when star power could sell a film on its own. Clooney and Pitt are some of the last actors who can still command attention with little more than their names above the title. And yet, even that kind of wattage isn’t enough to guarantee market success. Once, this pairing would have been an event; now, it’s just another option in your queue.

The real surprise here isn’t Pitt and Clooney, though their self-deprecating takes on their twilight years do provide some chuckles. It’s Austin Abrams as “the Kid,” the not-quite-dead lover who awakens mid-movie and transforms the plot from a buddy comedy into a frenetic chase across the city. Abrams plays the quintessential motormouth, injecting a shot of drug-laced energy into the film just when it starts to sag. His kinetic monologue, full of nervy, semi-coherent explanations about how he got mixed up in drugs and mobsters, is one of the film’s true highlights and he manages to outshine his veteran co-stars, at least for a few key scenes.

Watts also seems to revel in genre homage. The film tips its hat to Pulp Fiction, with a not-so-subtle nod to Harvey Keitel in its grammatically incorrect title, and sprinkles in everything from MacGuffins in bags to POV shots from the trunk of a car. Yet none of this coheres into something greater... perhaps that was never its intention to begin with.