While we did get to hear both George Clooney and Brad Pitt voice minor roles in John Krasinski’s IF earlier in the year, Jon Watts reunites the two for the first time on screen in 16 years in what should be an entertaining action buddy comedy film. Unfortunately, the film isn’t quite like what the trailers advertised and instead leaves a nasty taste in your mouth after spending 108 minutes with it. Not only does it feel like the iconic duo were underutilised in Wolfs, but it’s also accompanied by a weak script that fails to provide either action or comedy, making it a struggle to actually stay entertained.
Wolfs follows the story of two professional fixers who prefer to work alone, finding themselves forced to work together after they’re hired to do the same job.
The film starts off with Margaret (Amy Ryan), a district attorney who finds herself with a dead “prostitute” in her hotel room. After franticly panicking, she calls a man, one who can help her get out of this sticky situation we’ve found her in. “There’s only one man in this city who can do what you do,” is what Margaret says before we’re introduced to the actual man himself, a fixer whose job it is to clean up dead bodies from situations like these.
While the man Margaret calls begins to start his job, they’re interrupted by a knock at the door. Another man enters the scene, dressed and acting behaviourally similar to the man who just came before. Another fixer. A fixer who has been brought to do this job by Pam (Frances McDormand), the owner of the hotel, who has been spying through the hidden camera fixed into the wall.
The two men are never introduced by name once in the film, and even a joke is made in its last minutes regarding their names, but the credits refer to them as Margaret’s Man (George Clooney) and Pam’s Man (Brad Pitt). It works within the concept of the film, as these are men that are not meant to be known amongst people; it’s referenced many times throughout the film in case the viewer was somehow going to forget, and this is where the writing begins to suffer.
It takes one good thing, such as the men not being named, but then runs it into the ground with unbearably terrible jokes. Jon Watts falls into this trap many times with his writing, and it’s unfortunate as the premise for the film is a solid one, but he fails to take that and do something compelling with it; instead, we’re met with cliches and odd pacing.
The hotel scene where Margaret’s Man and Pam’s Man must put aside their differences and work together, takes up a quarter of the film’s runtime. I was left wondering when the film was exactly going to move along, I at one point thought the trailers used fake footage and the entirety of the film was to take place in the hotel, that might’ve made for a more interesting movie.
Coincidentally (or perhaps on purpose), the earlier mentioned prostitute is in fact just a guy in his 20s who we never get to find the name of but is credited as Kid (Austin Abrams). The two men find out that the Kid is involved with a heap of drugs, and to add on top of that, he isn’t actually dead and is well alive. The fixers don’t think to once ask his name, but this could be for the fact that they need the people they’re involved with to know as little about them as possible, which goes both ways.
Austin Abrams can at times help the film give the boost it needs when it comes to its entertainment meter, as I found myself snickering a few times as he made an attempt to tell his story of how he got a hold of the drugs. There’s a scene where Margaret’s Man proceeds to hit the Kid with the car, but he jumps at the very last moment, providing an awesome scene that looks different from the rest of the film thanks to the editing and camera work. If Wolfs had more of this work throughout, I would be singing its praises, but for some reason, Watts decides to stick with his usual style of filmmaking.
For a movie that’s advertised as an action comedy, it seems to lack both core components. When there is action in the film and I can only count two times where there were actual action sequences that involved gun fights, it was never engaging, which I believe should be hard to achieve but Jon Watts has somehow managed. From someone who has come from directing three Spider-Man movies where action is such an integral part of those movies, he somehow doesn’t bring anything he learnt from those films, but one can argue that the action in the three films also lacks style.
What I expected from the comedy might’ve been too high as I originally saw this film as a buddy action comedy, similar to The Nice Guys, a film that has become one of my favourites within the past year, so my standards were set at how that film handles the comedy. I don’t know if that was too high of a bar to set or Watts simply isn’t the right person to write a comedy film. Once again, I found myself giggling at a few things but nothing more. A character would say a joke and whether it was funny or not is up to the individual viewer but the same joke will get repeated numerous times, making it less funny each time it is said.
Wolfs is a placebo effect that makes you think you’re having fun, although in actuality, you’re bored and stuck wondering when the film will start getting good. It reunites George Clooney and Brad Pitt, who deliver great onscreen chemistry and provide the dynamic that’s needed for this sort of film, but when given a weak script that doesn’t help either of the actors with their characters, you end up with a film that’s unamusing and unentertaining to watch. It lacks the two core components that the film rides on, which are its action and comedy. Funnily enough, the film ends when it starts to get interesting, so maybe a sequel could work, and although there’s one already in the works, I think it needs a different director and writer attached to make this iconic duo work within this genre.
Wolfs releases on Apple TV+ on September 27.
