Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Wolfs’ on Apple TV+, a George Clooney/Brad Pitt Action-Comedy That Amuses as it Underwhelms

Two primary questions about Wolfs (now on Apple TV+): One, does the George Clooney-Brad Pitt tandem still ooze the quality comedy juice? And two, in this banter-heavy buddy/action comedy, are they playing “fixers” or “cleaners,” and is there really a difference? Let’s address the second one first – the official studio text says they’re “fixers” who are hired to tidy up an ugly bloody scene and keep a high-profile client out of trouble, but this hands-on dirty-work body-disposal gig suggests they’re “cleaners.” Compare that to Pulp Fiction ’s Winston Wolfe, who knows what to do and tells others to do it, or Michael Clayton , who exploits political connections and legal loopholes to facilitate cover-ups; THOSE guys are fixers. (Admittedly, there can be some overlap between the jobs of fixers and cleaners. I guess when legality is murky, nomenclatorial definitions follow suit.) Anyway, where was I? Right: Clooney and Pitt. Still got it? Yeah, sure. It’s like riding a bike.

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The Gist: Margaret (Amy Ryan) is New York’s district attorney, and she’s in a pickle. Hotel room, broken glass all over the place, blood all over her blouse, a very much younger and very much less alive man on the floor. Shaking, she dials a number that one only dials when one is in deep, deep shit. Soon thereafter, a man who’s name we don’t know knocks on the door, and if we did know his name we wouldn’t know it for long because we’d soon be dead. We’ll just call him George Clooney. He wears a black turtleneck beneath a black leather jacket and drives a BMW and listens to Sade. He coolly asks Margaret what the living crap happened here and she says she picked up this guy in the bar and they were flirting and whatever and he started jumping on the bed and fell off and smashed his head on the bar cart and stopped breathing. And there he is, bleeding in his tube socks and whitie-tighties.

Suddenly, knock knock at the door. It’s a man with a white oxford beneath a high-neck zip-up sweater and a black leather jacket, and we don’t know his name either because etc. etc., but we’ll call him Brad Pitt. Wait, how did two cleaners (or fixers) end up on one job? Aren’t these guys lone wolfs who go home to empty apartments to sip expensive booze alone while they obsessively clean their firearms and alphabetize their false identities and occasionally call their elderly mothers in other states who think they’re plumbers? Brad Pitt points up at the security camera as if to say you didn’t know that was there, didja? . He calls his boss (who’s the voice of a certain Oscar-winning actress) who orders these two gents to team up on the cleanup, and Brad Pitt and George Clooney have no choice but to comply and glare at each other and be defensive and flex their egos at every opportunity.

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The plot is truly who caresville, consisting of 23 or 17 or 31 MacGuffins that aren’t worth untangling or tracking, but it’s worth noting that it involves four bricks of heavy duty drugs, a body that isn’t A Body yet and an assortment of criminal-underworld types who’d associate with cleaner/fixers like George Clooney and Brad Pitt. The not-a-body, Mr. Tube Socks and White-tighties, perks up despite barely having a pulse, and is a kid known only as Kid (Austin Abrams of Euphoria and The Walking Dead ), and his purpose amongst the MacGuffins is far less important than his emerging from almost-deadness to add a much-needed dynamic to the Brad Pitt-George Clooney bickering and competitive dick-measuring, namely, pointing out in so many words how these two guys – with their steely cool-as-eff demeanors and monochrome wardrobes and piles of dirty secrets – are pretty much the same guys. I mean, they have so much in common, they should be work partners, or friends, or roomies, or, what the hell, gay lovers. Not that I’m spoiling anything, mind you. ’Shippers, ’ship away, if you must!

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: I don’t mind the Clooney-Pitt reunion – it’s a skotche better than the pairing of their Ocean’s castmates Matt Damon and Casey Affleck in the sorta similar The Instigators – which is like a good T-bone next to a baked potato. The reunion we should be yearning to see, though? Ryan Gosling and Russell Crowe in a The Nice Guys sequel.

Performance Worth Watching: Splitting the hair between these Clooney and Pitt performances requires professional-grade electron microscopes, they’re so similar. So let’s take the moment to praise Amy Ryan for being a somehow-underrated Oscar, Tony and SAG nominee whose work in Gone Baby Gone , The Wire and The Office is far from ordinary. Her role in Wolfs is all too brief.

Memorable Dialogue: This exchange is Wolfs in a nutshell:

Margaret: I don’t understand why I have to answer everything twice!

George Clooney: You don’t have to answer everything twice.

Brad Pitt: You might have to answer everything twice.

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: Wolfs is predictable, amusing but not laugh-out-loud funny, sleek and stylish, and built wholly around its stars and their charisma. It’s fine. Perfectly serviceable, especially to fans of these stalwart actors. It’s easy to enjoy their dynamic, even though we’re never fully invested in them as people, as characters, because they’re never more than the projections of Clooney and Pitt’s star power. The meta-narrative bumps into the regular narrative and they kinda just cancel each other out and leave us with an agreeable 100-odd minutes that are more likely to entertain postmillennial audiences with modest expectations, and that are familiar and comfortable with these guys, who do their thing as prescribed, and nothing more.

The film is smartly directed (and not quiet as smartly written) by Jon Watts, who follows three Spider-Man films with a mildly derivative banterfest, although he crafts a few crisply shot and edited sequences that are action-driven and largely dialogue-free. But that’s the only way he truly defies convention. There’s a wily foot/car chase through damp NYC streets, a tense-but-never-truly-threatening shootout and a sequence that’s too silly by half, in which our leading guys get caught up in a Croatian group dance at a wedding. The film moves quickly and never feels labored.

Watts’ convoluted plot is treated as a joke, which I appreciated, since the lack of any significant drama or stakes means I didn’t have to parse the details. Again, it’s all MacGuffins, because the film is about Brad Pitt and George Clooney bantering and bickering, exchanging silent begrudging acknowledgments, and awkwardly acknowledging their Real Human Feelings late in the film, albeit not so much that Wolfs is ever anything but featherweight. The screenplay’s connective tissue is a bevy of running jokes, which don’t transcend repetition into true comedy, and feel simply, you know, repetitious after a while, although you probably won’t be repelled by it. The action-comedy seems to be having a moment again, and it’s a slight bit better than The Union or The Instigators or Jackpot! , just because it’s Pitt and Clooney bringing their handsome-hardass salt-and-pepper swagger to the screen. At least it’s not another chapter in a movie franchise, he sighed, although frankly, it’s so familiar, it sometimes feels like one.

Our Call: I am only slightly more than indifferent toward Wolfs . So STREAM IT I guess, although let it be known that it’s not a cinematic meal that sticks to the ribs.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

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