BRudd Pitt and George Clooney play two sides to the same coin in Jon Watts' hilarious, high-concept comedy-thriller about a duo of self-proclaimed mavericks who find themselves double-booked. Watts, who made his name directing the big-money Spider-Man: Homecoming trilogy, approaches The Wolfs with the breathless relief of a man who now feels comfortable, at ease, and ready to consign Marvel's salt mines to history. The joke, though, might also be on Watts, since he's made a movie that's essentially a meme of two Spider-Men pointing at each other.
A nighttime exterior. The Manhattan skyline. Glass breaking, a woman screaming. Margaret (Amy Ryan, in a thankless role) is flirting with a young man she picked up in a bar, and then he's dead. Who do they call? She calls Clooney, who thinks he's the only man for the job. The hotel calls Pitt, who thinks the same. And therein lies the problem: these two are not lone wolves, after all. Incidentally, in Wolfs, the stars are supposed to be Nick and Jack, but as far as I can tell, they never actually say their names. Implicitly, the movie wants us to see them as Pitt and Clooney.
Would it have been any different if Watts had reversed the roles, casting Pitt as Jack and Clooney as Nick? Probably not, because the two fixers are spitting images. They share the same raspy growl and the same narrowed gaze. Both wear black leather jackets and have grizzled stubble. Their looks are amusing, bordering on the comical. Pitt and Clooney could star in a gay Hollywood version of The Hairy Bikers, in which celebrity chefs chase half-naked teens through the streets.
Nick and Jack's job is supposed to be simple, but of course, events intervene: a young hottie (credited as the Kid, played with awkward, beta-male charm by Austin Abrams) turns out not to be dead and is on the run. Now he's running wild through Lower Manhattan in just his pants, with the janitors hot on his tail, complaining about his back hurting and how he's too old for this shitty job.
The movie itself never amounts to much more than a silly, self-indulgent crime drama, but the leads seem to be having fun, and their playfulness is generally infectious. Plot twist after plot twist, the stakes keep rising: there's a bag of drugs in the trunk, a gang of Albanian gangsters in the parking lot. It would all be ruined if Nick and Jack hadn't fantasized about themselves being clever pawns, as we know from their habit of playing Sado's clever pawns in the car.
The boy assumes they're partners; “You guys are basically the same person,” he says, chuckling. This is, of course, the central concept of Wolves, but as the initial gag wears on and the fracas starts to fizzle, it ultimately proves to be the film's limit. A good buddy movie is undoubtedly about commonalities, but it's also about differences and friction, in the same way that sports rivalries are defined by a clash of styles. Redford needed Newman, Djokovic needed Nadal. Watts' two wolves can only growl and howl hoarsely.
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