This tolerable buddy comedy for the geezer generation is, in at least one sense, an important piece of work. Venice International Film Festival was, certainly, delighted to have Brad Pitt and George Clooney, the film’s sexagenarian stars, making their still sprightly way along the red carpet. But grimmer news singles the project out.
Not long before the festival began it emerged that Apple, reeling after a few cinematic disappointments, was to give the film only a brief US theatrical release and, elsewhere, to send it straight to its streaming service. Venice is about the only place in Europe you will see it on the big screen. “Clearly we’re declining. We are in decline,” Clooney joked at the press conference when asked about a film with these two stars going to streaming.
You wouldn’t say there is much wrong with Wolfs. Written and directed by Jon Watts, who earned fortunes for Marvel with the recent Spider-Man movies, the flick rattles along amiably enough on grumpy quips and comically heightened violence. But it seems unlikely that this minor piece would have ended up in a prime spot at Venice if the stars were, say, 15 per cent less famous.
It kicks off with a mildly daring first half-hour that never moves from the same room. A strict-on-crime district attorney (Amy Ryan) is in a state of panic after a young man she’s just met has died after crashing through a glass table in a luxury hotel. An unnamed associate has given her a number to phone if she ever ends up in a similarly awkward situation. She dials and, minutes later, Jack turns up in the grey-fox form of George Clooney.
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A character in an Anthony Powell novel was described as being “essentially American in believing all questions have answers”. That’s Jack. He is in the same line as Harvey Keitel’s Winston Wolfe (note the name) in Pulp Fiction. However tricky the question, these experienced hard nuts will find an answer.
Jack has already talked her down and begun mopping up when Nick – yes, it’s Pitt – ambles in and attempts to take on the job himself. He has been hired by an unseen voice on a phone (I’m betting it’s an uncredited Susan Sarandon) who persuades the enormously reluctant duo to work together. The task becomes hugely complicated when they discover about $250,000 worth of heroin in a backpack.
No disrespect to Pitt and Clooney, but Watts’s script might have better suited actors who shouldered their age less lightly. The film is not stuffed with oldie jokes, but we do see them reach for the painkillers and embarrassedly pull on reading glasses to squint at small text. Close your eyes and you could be hearing Statler and Waldorf from The Muppet Show grumble, but these actors – two of the last surviving movie stars, despite delivering fewer hits than you might guess – just seem too sleek, too chiselled, too fresh. The late Alan Arkin and James Caan could have done it nicely in their more rugged 60s.
Mind you, the film itself suffers from an excess of sleek. We remember Pitt and Clooney being smooth in the Oceans films, but the style here is closer to that of George’s Nespresso commercials. It’s so shiny you could use its surface to apply your mascara. Every item of clothing seems right out of the box. Every tooth gleams like a welding tool.
None of this helps when, in its later stages, eventually out of the hotel, Wolfs takes a wild Christmas journey through the streets of New York. There are reminders of Martin Scorsese’s After Hours and Sean Baker’s incoming Palme d’Or winner Anora in that urban chaos, but Watts’s bland style washes out all the grime to leave us with, well, something you might expect from a streaming release.
