'Wolfs' Review: Brad Pitt and George Clooney Do the Same Ol Shtick
Jon Watts' feature is a wildly mediocre cleaner comedy
There’s an inherently dated quality to a George Clooney and Brad Pitt buddy comedy in 2024. Once the acting darlings of the 1990s and 2000s, the pair crafted an enduring franchise together in the Ocean’s series, but the bloom’s been off the rose for a minute. In recent years Clooney has found more consistent success as a producer and, less consistently, as a director, while Pitt’s current legal troubles have caused audiences to second-guess him. It leaves their latest team-up, the grammatically incorrect (and highly annoying) Wolfs, feeling like it missed the boat by a good decade, at least.
Pitt and Clooney play two unnamed cleaners — think less Molly Maids and more Harvey Keitel in Pulp Fiction, the alleged source of the title — who are tasked with disposing a body in the hotel room of an elected official. Each works for a different person, leaving the two men at odds at who is going to take the job. But when the dead body ends up being not quite dead yet the two will have to team up over the course of one long night.
Director and screenwriter Jon Watts is better known to MCU fans for helming the Tom Holland trio of Spider-Man films; he hasn’t directed a non-superhero feature in nearly a decade. So it’s understandable why there’s a fair amount of creakiness to everything, particularly in the film’s script which sets up a fairly basic premise of a female assistant district attorney running for reelection (played by Amy Ryan who disappears after about 20 minutes) getting caught in a hotel with a dead young man/potential sex worker. It’s the one element of uniqueness in the film, hearing Ryan’s Margaret hear phrases we’ve commonly heard in thrillers where the genders are reversed: “I don’t do this. This isn’t something I do.”
Unfortunately any sense of originality goes out the door with Ryan, whose constant face on billboards citing her reelection continuously leave the audience believing she’ll return and/or is definitely involved in the plot somehow. Nope. Instead, the film sees Pitt and Clooney try to do differing Winston Wolf impressions for nearly two hours to little fanfare. The various cleaning techniques lack any sense of flair, short of Clooney’s character finding a fun way to hold a body on a luggage rack.
But, for the most part, it’s hearing the two bicker like an old married couple or, more closely, like two 60-something old men who just want to get to bed before 9pm. That’s not hyperbole as a significant portion of the film sees the two literally yawning and/or asking when they can go home. At times it’s hard not to wonder if they were doing improv or not.
Neither actor is particularly bad, but they’re both clearly resting on some deep-seated laurels and while there is a significant chemistry level to them — implying that, for all their characters’ talk of not knowing each other, they totally do — there’s no real sense of conflict between the pair. When Pitt’s cleaner calls Clooney “some old bag man” it’s utterly bizarre considering there’s 3 years between the two. Had Pitt’s character been younger the chronic digs about age could have had some zing instead of gathering dust.
Clooney edges himself out as the MVP of the movie, if only because he has such a commanding presence coupled with an intense warmth, particularly where the Kid is concerned. The film jokes that do land are because of Clooney’s ability to convey frustration in a comedic way. Pitt is just reliant on being cocky which, at this point, isn’t a particularly charming skill.
Austin Abrams is the only other performer with significant screen time, in a role that feels like Tom Holland was the initial choice. The unnamed Kid, who reiterates time and again he isn’t a sex worker, instantly takes to the two hitmen with all the adoration of a kitten following around a mama cat. Abrams is perfectly fine, but there’s little to him outside of one rapid-fire monologue meant to act as character backstory and needed exposition to fill out the plot. All of that’s supposed to make up for the fact that he’s a loose end the two will have to off by the time the credits role. That decision, which won’t be spoiled here, never feels earned at all but another sloppy script turn that probably seemed smarter on the page.
Despite the fast cars, and an extended car chase, Wolfs ambles once the two hitmen and the Kid embark on a journey to return stolen drugs. At some point there’s a revelation that the two lone wolves (proper spelling) shouldn’t be working together, talking to each other, or even in the same room for…reasons is introduced with all the depth of two little kids who have decided they’re mortal enemies because they just discovered the word. It brings in the requisite shoot-outs, and an ending baldly ripped from one of the best movie endings of all time, but by that point you’ll be as tired with everything as the two leads.
Wolfs will no doubt come and go, having lost its theatrical release in the 11th hour in favor of a streaming drop (a sequel has already been greenlit so go figure). The two wolves we follow for nearly 120 minutes try their hardest to have fun but it just becomes too much of a howler.
Grade: C-
Wolves hits Apple’s streaming service on Friday.