It’s been nine years since Jon Watts made a feature film that wasn’t about Spider-Man––long enough that for the past three years his MCU entries have outnumbered all others. The once-indie director of Clown and Cop Car was poached for the franchise after cranking out those two features in back-to-back years, his directorial voice put on the backburner to develop Tom Holland’s hero. Walking into Wolfs, one can’t help wondering what Watts’ taste and style has become after a trilogy of cookie-cutter superhero blockbusters fitting so cleanly and unfussily into the Marvel machine.
With George Clooney and Brad Pitt at the helm as lead producers and actors, there’s a well-founded hope that whatever Watts pitched on the page must have been promising enough to reunite one of Hollywood’s most beloved duos for the first time in 16 years. Thus it’s nothing short of a disappointment when that wait amounts to meager, forgettable fun. There have to be better scripts landing on their tables.
We open on a death in Manhattan, or the sound of one at least. By the time the camera is in the room, all we see is the scene of the fall: a tall, twiggy kid on the ground, unmoving, surrounded by glass and bent metal. The District Attorney (Amy Ryan) stands in shock near his body, a deep existential tremor unleashing inside her as she considers her life after this gets out. She rifles through the contacts in her phone, hoping to find a name that offers relief, someone who can help her. She clicks on a couple potentials but quickly abandons them. Suddenly, she finds it: “[ ]” A moniker as vague and lacking as the movie it represents.
She makes the call. Within minutes, Margaret’s Man (Clooney) shows up, delivering a one-liner-heavy intro speech about his unparalleled game in the art of making accidents disappear. But before he can finish there’s a knowing knock at the door: Pam’s Man (Pitt) waltzes in, finding Margaret’s Man on the scene, unironically delivering (much to Margaret’s Man’s displeasure) these exact same lines to the DA. Infighting ensues.
The details after that are best left unspoken––not because they’re spoiler-heavy, but because the movie doesn’t have much to offer by way of score, composition, camera movement, sound design, style, lighting, production design, etc. At least there will be some narrative to discover, and a pleasure in lead performers still harmoniously attuned to one another despite the script’s hobbles.
Pitt and Clooney are exactly what you want them to be, landing dry jabs and maneuvering sly acting chops, playing their chemistry to a T, but Watts’ script gives them so little to play with. There is a distinct sharpness to the dialogue of the Ocean’s trilogy that the two absolutely tear through with the right direction. Likewise, the singular, amoral comic-tragedy embedded in Burn After Reading makes for previously unimagined characterization and a genuine weight of anxiety, be it devastating or hilarious, heaved onto every scene. The duo has proven perfect when a narrative and thematic stage that rich is set.
Wolfs doesn’t hold a candle to that complexity. Much like its unclever title, the film is a stilted, cornering work that keeps its performers from shining in any element, cinematography included––it’s a rather unpleasant movie to look at, notwithstanding the glowy, riveting chase through a snowy Chinatown. Pitt and Clooney, as developers and producers, are as much to blame as Watts.
Nearly every joke boils down to the same premise: said rivals have been working so similarly and so closely (yet never together) for so many years that they have developed the exact same tactics unbeknownst to each other. Whether they’re from the same training school, they used to be best friends, or the industry is so narrow-minded that everybody works the same way––it doesn’t matter. The joke is the same: there they go again, being like each other.
It’s not a terribly funny joke. More like a wink––the kind that gets a chuckle and, after 5-10 times, loses the glow of even that light charm. Which is a good metaphor for Wolfs as a whole: a fast-fading star of a film that burns out much too soon.
Wolfs premiered at the Venice Film Festival and will open on September 20 before coming to Apple TV+ on September 27.
The post Venice Review: Wolfs Makes Little of a Reunion for George Clooney and Brad Pitt first appeared on The Film Stage.
