From Hong Kong to the Britains to the Americas, we’re hooked on ultra-stylized worlds of crime. They have a mercurial appeal, but it’s difficult to define what makes a caper pair so perfectly with a criminal underbelly. We just know it when we see it. In movies like God of Gamblers, Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, or John Wick, the filmmakers push past reality into folkloric. In his early career, Quentin Tarantino was a mastermind at crafting these illegal landscapes and the characters who thrived and died in them. For example, Harvey Keitel as Winston “The Wolf” Wolfe in Pulp Fiction.
Some people call Winston Wolfe a fixer, a highly skilled professional who makes problems go away. Olivia Pope is a fixer. The Wolf is something else. He’s a cleaner, a highly skilled professional who makes a murder scene so spotless no one knows blood was spilled. Keitel’s cleaner is elegant, expeditious, and damn near therapeutic. This is a guy you can trust to turn your mishap into happiness.
Apparently, The Wolf is a breed. Writer/director, Jon Watts took what Tarantino and Keitel started and created Wolfs—a crime caper starring George Clooney and Brad Pitt as two cleaners who could easily be the sons of the beast. Same black attire, same efficiency, but lacking the chill—although the previously dead body in the trunk of their car thinks they’re very cool.
Taking it from the top: An NYC district attorney, Margaret (Amy Ryan), gets herself into a predicament inside a $10,000 hotel suite with a half-naked twenty-something. A tighty-whitey clad kid she claims “is not a prostitute.” Splattered in blood and feeling anxious about it, she calls a number she was given for situations like this. Her call is returned by Cleaner Number One (Clooney) who is now called Margaret’s Man. Consequently, the owner of the hotel, Pam (Frances McDormand), decides to call her guy (Pitt), known as Pam’s Man.
The two cleaners prefer to work alone, and despise each other on sight, but circumstances force them together. Circumstances being Pam and Margaret. The guys flex on one another in hilarious ways—including getting owned by Margaret for their tastes in clothes. After which the pair realizes the Kid (Austin Abrams), aka the body in the trunk, isn’t dead. An insane chase scene on foot and in a BMW follows. After which the three ‘do the manly bonding.’ Before they get into another predicament involving…what might be cocaine, might be heroine…(my knowledge of drugs is pretty much Zyrtec and cough drops) but the situation is going to ruin their night.
Wolfs allows Clooney and Pitt to turn work into a playground. They’re enjoying themselves and, even when the movie wobbles, that goes a long way. In Pulp Fiction they’d call it “one charming motherfuckin’ pig.” Especially during sight and sound gags about their elder-criminal aching backs. The bones are creaking, y’all. Clooney, as Margaret’s Man, adds a Sean Connery-style edge to his charm. While Pitt plays the perpetual pretty boy, who makes you want to smack Pam’s Man and whisper “grow up” (with a wink). As the third wheel, Abrams comes up winning. He carries the movie’s emotional weight in his character’s backpack and the unicorn plushie hanging off it.
The result is a slick, frenetic crime-caper that’s basically Lone Wolves and Cub. It just doesn’t achieve full viability, playing out like an extended preview for a coming attraction. Although only charged to 75%, Wolfs has enough power to work well on streaming. However, as an episodic series, it would level up. Imagine 4 individual stories that interconnect before detonating in a final 5th episode—where it all comes together. Perhaps something similar is where Wolfs is going because a sequel is already on the way.
In theaters on September 20 and streaming on Apple TV+ on September 27
