WOLFS

The bromance chemistry between George Clooney and Brad Pitt ensures an entertaining time, but scrape away their charms and there is nothing remarkable in the slightest about this film.

Where do you go when you’ve just directed one of the biggest movies of all time? If you’re Spider-Man director Jon Watts, the answer is: write your own action movie, hire two of the biggest names in the business to star and have Apple TV+ pony up the cash. The end result, clumsily called Wolfs, will probably please Watts, though it’s unlikely to solicite more than a shrug from casual viewers.

In the movie Clooney and Pitt play rival ‘fixers’, called in to clean up the bloody mess a married attorney has made after inviting a young man into her hotel room. Their clashing characters complicate the job and things don’t get any easier when they discover the young man was carrying four big drug parcels with him.

As a premise, this is a classic Hollywood star vehicle, and Watts treats it as thus, letting his leading men hug the limelight and having fun with the barbed, comedic insults they throw at each other. Clooney and Pitt, old pros as they are, could play these characters in their sleep but they still bring some fresh fun to the oddball pairing.

Whether you will enjoy Wolfs will depend a lot on whether this is enough for you. If it is, you’ll spend a breezy hundred minutes in front of you screen. If it isn’t, you might get bored quickly with the predictable quips and unimaginative plot.

I fell somewhere in between the two, but I also fully understand why Apple TV+ decided – much to Clooney’s and Pitt’s chagrin – not to release Wolfs in cinemas. The small screen is big enough for this easily digestible but equally easily forgotten trifle.

release: 2024

director: Jon Watts

starring: George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Austin Abrams, Amy Ryan