Jon Watts rediscovers his filmmaking joie de vivre with the classic comic thriller “Wolfs,” starring George Clooney and Brad Pitt as a pair of lone-working fixers who find themselves cleaning up the same mess when hired for the same job. Seeing this “Ocean’s Eleven” duo of matinee idols back up on the silver screen together means you’re in sure hands from the start — the witty repartee flowing, the smug suave bandying about, and all in a lean, clean, cooly running-timed comedy that places Jack (Clooney) and Nick (Pitt) into their own sort of “After Hours” late night in New York. That’s because the job gets a lot messier than expected when a guy simply dubbed in the credits as “kid” (and played by the talented, fast-talking, grinny rising actor Austin Abrams) turns out not to be as dead as the district attorney (Amy Ryan) who brought him up to her hotel room thought. “Wolfs” is slickly directed with a classy touch by Watts, who just finished his duties as Sony’s “Spider-Man” director.
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A sequel is already in the works to writer/director Watts’ irresistibly pleasurable studio comedy, and you can see why. Even if “Wolfs” is a light affair in the end, it’s a low-key, restrained good time, confidently told with two charismatic leading turns that are nearly even upstaged by Abrams. “Wolfs” is merely a diverting entertainment — and it’s really a shame Apple is only putting it in theaters for one week, because this Clooney-Pitt caper would do enough business to merit even longer — not an Oscar movie, not an overly serious movie for adults. But it’s a smart one for grown-ups, even in its most blandly reassuring moments where “Wolfs” is riding high only on the chemistry of the leads, the strengths of whose performances are reminders of what they’ve always been great at — and make look easy.
A visibly stressed-out Amy Ryan (and who doesn’t love Amy Ryan? ) as district attorney Margaret summons a service dispatched by a voice that belongs to Frances McDormand to bring a discretionary fixer (Clooney’s Jack, a far cry from the Michael Claytons of the world) to clean up a messy one-night stand that almost was. As Margaret explains, the kid (Abrams) she picked up in the hotel bar before bringing upstairs got a little too boisterous with the booze, jumped off the bed, and hit his head, killing him. Jack arrives to clean up the mess, but so does Nick, who’s also been sent there by the same boss in a scenario immediately rife with comic potential. And it turns out the kid may have actually ODed on a sample of the four bricks of heroin Jack and Nick, forced to share space and solve this night in tandem despite an instant disdain for one another, find in a backpack.
Plus, the kid isn’t dead either, as his flailing pale self that looks on the verge of the cadaverous pops out of the trunk Jack shoves him in. So a trio is formed, and with the goal to return the heroin to whom it belongs. As the kid says in a looping, breathless rant Abrams delivers with shrewd comic timing, he took on moving the drugs for the thrill of the story. Nick and Jack end up chasing the kid, clad in whitey-tighties only, up and down the Lower East Side in another scene that stirs up memories of “After Hours.” Abrams himself could even be a successor to a young Griffin Dunne, though his character here is more than a bit more thick-headed.
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Cinematographer Larkin Seiple and production designer Jade Healy make respectable use of nighttime, twilit New York locations — this is a movie that takes place almost in real time, in the wee hours after midnight and before dawn — as well as Brighton Beach in a final scene that concludes the movie on a note of ambiguity. But with the sequel already in play, we can be reassured that these men aren’t going to die after the screen cuts to black. There’s nothing especially memorable or unique about “Wolfs” — it’s a familiar tale told well, and in the comforting presence of two of Hollywood’s biggest actors. Watching Clooney and Pitt act like they hate each other makes for a solid time at the movies, and in a film that takes almost zero risks (other than with a budget of its size for what’s basically a streaming-only picture), there are fewer chances for it to screw up. A truly laugh-out-loud moment on a subway car toward the finale almost hairpin-turns “Wolfs” into something mawkishly sentimental — only for Watts to say, just kidding, and stick up the middle finger anything of the kind. And the actors could sell it with their eyes closed and probably in their sleep, too.
Grade: B
“Wolfs” world premiered at the 2024 Venice Film Festival. It will premiere in theaters for one week starting September 20 before streaming on Apple TV+ September 27.
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