Wolfs: Clooney, Pitt vehicle is fine but forgettable

Wine and cheese. Peanut butter and jelly. Socks and Crocs. And, of course, Brad Pitt and George Clooney.

Among all the randomness of the universe, there are some pairings that just make sense — complementing one another by happy accident but so perfectly compatible it's as if they were designed that way. So given how well they work together, you'd think the Clooney and Pitt-headlined Wolfs would be a slam dunk, an easy cash-in on the boundless charisma of two of Hollywood's most bankable film stars.

But while by no means a flop, writer-director Jon Watts's buddy-fixer flick is no blockbuster either. Instead, the duo's first serious theatrical reteaming in more than a decade does just enough to keep you engaged, but lacks the energetic, deadpan quippiness of their Ocean's Eleven chemistry. 

That's not for lack of trying as Wolfs clearly had that Soderburgh dynamic in mind. We initially follow Clooney's unnamed "cleaner" — the type of criminal problem solver made famous through Pulp Fiction's Mr. Wolf. But while on the job for a high-powered district attorney saddled with a lifeless 20-something bleeding out on her hotel room carpet, he's unfortunately paired with another fixer, Pitt's equally shady — also unnamed — cleaner, someone employed by the hotel to keep situations just like this one from giving them a bad name. 

The remainder of the story plays out more or less how you'd expect: the Rush Hour, Lethal Weapon-esque formula sends them on a goose chase around New York, two "lone wolves" forced to work toward the same goal while bumping up against each other's egos. Though to be fair, Wolfs' awkwardly crammed-in holiday theme and occasionally canned jokes may have it tracking closer to Jingle All The Way.    

That framing does lead to one of Wolfs' most obvious problems: while it's nice to see a somewhat original, self-contained story (ignoring the film's perhaps prematurely commissioned sequel), there is a considerable chunk of time spent on clunky exposition outlining the stakes and rules of their hyper-specific underground careers. 

And unlike the recent Hit Man's strategy of acknowledging the ridiculousness of its subject in the plot, Wolfs doubles down on crafting the mythos of its, at best, semi-real archetype. 

That leads to some artificial and convoluted stakes as the audience is walked through the creation of a brand-new film trope. Now, the world of fixers doesn't have the culturally acknowledged strictures of pirates or vampires. So while equally ridiculous, being told a vampire absolutely can't go out in the sun feels less clumsy than explaining exactly why it's so important two bagmen absolutely, positively cannot be perceived as friends at an upcoming wedding. 

But the bigger flaw is in somehow failing to make Pitt and Clooney the most interesting thing in the room. Their presence isn't entirely absent — the casually comedic indifference they demonstrated in Ocean's is still apparent in these subtly self-conscious cool guy personas. 

But Wolfs lacks the Soderburg touch — a beating energy played up by quick cuts, quirky framing and an understanding of what makes the Pitt/Clooney combo funny in the first place.

The Oceans' franchise seized on the inherent ridiculousness of putting together two of the most ultra gorgeous paragons of mainstream Hollywood and undercutting their competence and abilities at every turn — all while keeping its editing tight enough so it always feels lively. 

These iterations of the Adonis odd couple do struggle to live up to the perfection telegraphed by their chiselled cheeks, but the juxtaposed absurdity they've reached in other productions is lacking here. In Ocean's Eleven, we saw the ironic comedy in watching two of the most innaccessibly competent paragons of American popular culture bumbling through tasks as eminently average people and without success. Here, we're just watching two male models rattle off somewhat canned jokes in a film with a pacing problem. 

While there is comedy, there's a reduced chemistry here, and it makes the branded tone drag instead of punch. It's a Mr. and Mrs. Smith remake, but instead of Pitt's original version, it's the substantially more understated Donald Glover remake — a tone that may have worked for him but doesn't serve what Pitt and Clooney bring to the table.

And when the humour does come, it's mostly when the two deal with a third party — the star of this show may just be Austin Abrams's character rattling off a story about how he hasn't "got the juice." 

Theatrical to streaming

It's an unfortunate miss for the celestial event of getting the actors into a production together — an opportunity appetizing enough that it enticed Apple to plan a wide theatrical release, before recently backtracking to a streaming-first strategy. 

The studio can't exactly be faulted for balking: while Pitt has some recent successes in his back pocket, Clooney's past decade of theatrical releases ranges from, at best, the qualified success of Money Monster, to the dismal failure of Tomorrowland. It's a rough enough track record that, according to Clooney, Quentin Tarantino recently claimed the actor is no longer a movie star capable of carrying a blockbuster.  

That's an especially apt observation here. Worth watching but utterly forgettable, Wolfs is the type of movie that in prior years would have been destined for a handful of half-hearted recommendations, and then the DVD bargain bins.

Now, you can just check it out on streaming.