Review: ‘Wolfs’ stars George Clooney, Brad Pitt and mayhem

A generation ago, George Clooney worked with Brad Pitt in Vegas on a heist, in 2001, for director Steven Soderbergh’s remake of “Ocean’s Eleven.”

Two “Ocean’s” sequels followed, of varying quality. But Clooney and Pitt’s particular stardust — supercoolness cut with just enough wit, especially in Clooney’s case, for liftoff — did not vary.

Now it’s 2024 and the “Ocean’s” have trickled down into a stream. “Wolfs,” a diverting-enough reteaming of Clooney and Pitt, rolls out Sept. 27 on Apple TV+.

One reason writer/director Jon Watts’ film gets by is ridiculously simple. In a streaming-dominant world where it takes real imagination for screenwriters not to write about idealized assassins-for-hire, “Wolfs” hangs its narrative on something a tiny bit different. Clooney and Pitt play rival underworld “fixers,” who clean up unauthorized crime scenes and political scandals for a handsome fee. This means danger and adversaries with guns. But for a fixer, the killing is more of a job perk than a prerequisite.

Amy Ryan plays a Manhattan district attorney, tough on crime, ambitious and unlucky. During a hotel room tryst with a bartender, there’s an unfortunate incident resulting in a dead body. One phone call later, there’s Clooney, murmuring questions, assuring the DA that all will be clean and well and fine.

Clooney’s character remains nameless, as does Pitt’s. Minutes after Fixer One enters the hotel room, Fixer Two pays an unexpected visit, delivering the same assurances, and having just left the same barber for the same meticulous beard trim favored by the slightly older, grumpier Fixer One. (Clooney is 63; Pitt is 60, and “Wolfs” features jokes about the fixers needing Advil and reading glasses.)

Their unseen project manager, voiced by Frances McDormand, is thrown for a loop by what appears to be a double booking. She encourages these two lone wolves to work together. The spelling of the title “Wolfs” archly indicates the difficulty of this.

The corpse turns out to be injured, not dead, a naive sweetie played by Austin Abrams (“The Walking Dead,” “Euphoria”). He’s also a temporary drug mule, whose stash belongs to Albanian mobsters. “Wolfs” pinballs around Manhattan in the wee hours as the fixers accompany their bartender/mule on a mission to deliver the drugs.

Watts stage-manages some well paced vehicular mayhem, opaquely plotted intrigue concerning the DA’s connections in the real estate world and many low-key zingers between Clooney and Pitt about their aging carcasses. The action-comedy benefits from cinematographer Larkin Seiple, who lit and shot “Everything Everywhere All at Once.” Seiple’s work here lays on the sleek shadows and strategic neon backlighting and velvety visual textures. The movie purrs; it’s more cat than movie.

Does it matter that “Wolfs” is about literally nothing except itself and its star packaging? Maybe not. On the other hand, Watts hasn’t written a single fleshed-out character. It’s about genre tropes, distilled to minimalist quipping amid maximalist mayhem.

In this sort of entertainment, the line between “relaxed” and just plain “lax” can be so, so thin. It was the same with Apple TV+’s recent action-comedy “The Instigators,” starring two other “Ocean’s Eleven” alums — Matt Damon and Casey Affleck.

Of the two, “Wolfs” is the better forgettable movie. If the sequel comes to pass, I hope it can avoid the mistake of diminishing its comic impulse, however uneven, in favor of more “edge,” i.e., rougher, more violent and, yes, because we are who we are, more commercial.

Violence is easy; comedy is hard. And there was a time in Hollywood when essentially comic star vehicles weren’t recreational killing sprees in sheep’s clothing.