by Charles Kirkland, Jr.
After an incident in a hotel… ah who cares? George Clooney and Brad Pitt are together again in a movie. The name of the film is Wolfs.
Margaret, the New York City District Attorney, is at a hotel one night and has a disastrous incident. She reaches out to the one man she has been told can erase all her problems. Once this “cleaner” arrives and starts to work on the scene, another cleaner with the same intention is hired by the owner of the high-priced, ultra-exclusive hotel. After being forced to work together, these two lone “wolves” find themselves in a much more intense situation than they imagined at the beginning. Can they put their selfish differences aside long enough to survive the night?
Writer-director Jon Watts brings us this fairy tale starring George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Amy Ryan, Austin Abrams, and Poorna Jagannathan. Technically, Wolfs is the first time Clooney and Pitt have been in a film together since 2012’s 8. They both were voice-over actors in this year’s film IF but does it count if you don’t see them?
The whole purpose of a Clooney/Pitt film is that they can riff off of one another. The duo may have the best male on-screen chemistry of all time. They were the definition of cool together seemingly from the start of the Ocean’s franchise. In this film, Jon Watts, from the Tom Holland Spider-Man franchise, steps into the position of Stephen Soderbergh as the handler of the cool and this movie has a lot of cool.
The introduction to the “wolf” played by George Clooney is through his car radio as we hear Sade’s No Ordinary Love playing. As the smooth R&B/jazz standard plays, the audience gets the impression that Clooney is no ordinary guy. Music supervisor Gabe Hilfer makes some super smart choices for songs in the movie including Love, another Sade hit Smooth Operator, and Grover Washington Jr’s Just The Two Of Us. The music selection is an adult contemporary avenue to character development that works incredibly well. Theodore Shapiro also adds a score that is slick and sneaky which also adds well to the composition of the film.
Several visual sneaks in the film can let viewers think of other movies. There is a scene where there is a room plastered with pictures of Frank Sinatra and the Rat Pack. The genesis of the Clooney/Pitt phenomenon started with a film called Oceans 11, a remake of a Rat Pack film with the same name. Get it? The title of the movie itself can be taken as a reference to Harvey Keitel’s character in Pulp Fiction. That’s just two. There are more.
Speaking of slick and sneaky, a stunt performed in the movie that defies explanation. Without giving it away, one of the actors is involved with a car. The stunt is slowed down so that every moment of the stunt is visible. When the stunt ends, Brad Pitt’s character is watching the whole thing and simply mouths “wow.” The same thing that everyone watching the film is saying.
Because the phenomenon is real, there was a bidding war between Netflix, Sony, Lionsgate, and Apple for this film. Pitt and Clooney settled the war by convincing their production companies to take less money and commit the film to Apple. Jon Watts even left The Fantastic Four: The First Steps to make this film.
Rated R for language throughout and some violent content, Wolfs is a super-fun, super-cool movie experience, that reunites two Hollywood superstars. The movie fits the Clooney/Pitt vibe and we are all the more thankful for it. It is great to see these two on screen together, working with each other. By the way, they are already investigating a sequel. Can you say new franchise?
Wolfs is in select theaters and on Apple+ starting September 27, 2024.
Grade: B