Wolfs
When a lone wolf is called in to clean up a messy fatality, he discovers that he might not be the only alpha male in town…
The professionals: Brad Pitt and George Clooney (with Austin Abrams in the background)
Image courtesy of AppleTV+.
The film opens with the same expletive that kickstarted the comic mayhem of Four Weddings and a Funeral. But this feels real – terrifying even, as a woman in distress (Amy Ryan) fumbles for her bloodied mobile phone. She is in a state of undress, in a $10k-a-night New York hotel room, with an almost naked dead body beside her rented bed. She dials a number that she hoped that she would never have to call. And George Clooney picks up, his reassuring timbre pouring balm on her tattered nerves. She is to sit tight, not answer to anybody, not even help herself to a drink. She must not disturb the crime scene. He turns up pretty sharpish and starts to clean up the woman’s mess. “I didn’t realise people like you really existed,” she blurts out. “I don’t,” Clooney fixes her with a stern look. He is meant to be invisible, a true professional who gets the job done on his own terms – he is a lone wolf. And then Brad Pitt walks into the bloodied hotel room, in virtually identical attire and with a similar stance of arrogant confidence. Answering Brad Pitt’s glare of disapproval, Clooney mutters, “the feeling’s mutual.”
There is an endearing, unspoken shorthand between Pitt and Clooney, in Jon Watts’ classy comedy-thriller that could have been directed by Steven Soderbergh. There is the same slick, lean approach to the action as in Ocean’s Eleven, in which the narrative glides effortlessly along a well-polished rail. There is no need for fussy camera angles, apprehensive editing or distracting sound effects. The song on the stereo in Clooney’s car is ‘Smooth Operator’ (by Sade), a perfect match for the man in black with the fashionably grey stubble. Come to think of it, Pitt affects the same silver facial hair, at least on his chinny chin chin – although he’s no pig-to-the-slaughter of Clooney’s wolf. He is perhaps the Sundance Kid to Clooney’s Butch Cassidy – a dynamic that is almost directly referenced.
They won’t thank me for saying it, but this cleaner and fixer could be mirror images of each other. Of course, there are complications and the stylish interiors and gorgeous scenes of a snowy New York are not enough to prop up a story that ever-so-slowly stumbles into familiar territory. The film’s element of surprise can only hold the attention for so long, although Wolfs is replete with nice touches and genuinely amusing lines. Brad Pitt, standing in the corridor of a less then reputable hotel: “I feel like I'm getting syphilis just standing here.” And there’s the moment when, sitting opposite each other in a diner, each cleaner reaches into his identical black leather jacket for – no, not a gun, but his reading glasses... Much publicity has surrounded the film’s truncated theatrical release, but it does fit snugly on a 50-inch 4K screen for a Saturday night.
JAMES CAMERON-WILSON
Cast: George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Amy Ryan, Austin Abrams, Poorna Jagannathan, Zlatko Burić, Richard Kind, and the voice of Frances McDormand.
Dir Jon Watts, Pro George Clooney, Grant Heslov, Brad Pitt, Dede Gardner, Jeremy Kleiner, Dianne McGunigle and Jon Watts, Screenplay Jon Watts, Ph Larkin Seiple, Pro Des Jade Healy, Ed Andrew Weisblum, Music Theodore Shapiro, Costumes Amy Westcott, Sound Craig Henighan.
Apple Studios/Plan B Entertainment/Smokehouse Pictures-AppleTV+.
108 mins. USA/UK. 2024. UK and US Rel: 27 September 2024. Cert. 15.
