Wolfs: Brad Pitt, George Clooney in laid-back comic thriller

3/5 stars

Unveiled out of competition at the Venice Film Festival, Wolfs is a comic thriller that skates along primarily thanks to the laid-back bonhomie of its two stars, George Clooney and Brad Pitt.

These two long-time buddies, who first worked together in Ocean’s Eleven, are back playing rival “cleaners” in this New York-set tale. Both dressed in blacks and greys, uttering the same gnomic phrases, as Austin Abrams’ Kid points out, “You’re, like, basically the same guy.”

Neither Pitt nor Clooney has a name in the film, perhaps because their star power is so enormous we’ll only ever know them as Brad and George.

One chilly night in the Big Apple, Clooney’s fixer is called to a penthouse in a plush hotel by a shaken District Attorney named Margaret (Amy Ryan). In the bedroom is the Kid (Austin Abrams), who she thinks is dead, after he fell and crashed into a drinks trolley. Running a campaign to get tough on crime, the DA knows that if this gets out, it could ruin her.

Then Pitt turns up, it soon emerging he’s been hired by the hotel owner to clean up this mess. With identities compromised, it means that he and Clooney will have to work together, a job that becomes increasingly complicated when a bag of drugs is found and the Kid turns out not to be dead.

As set-ups go, it’s compelling enough, and kicks into gear when Euphoria star Abrams wakes up and makes a bolt for it, in just his underwear, through the freezing cold streets of the city.

You’ll find out next to nothing about the Clooney and Pitt characters, as their shadowy, lone-wolf status dictates. But Watts mines pleasing humour from his veteran A-listers (jokes about fading eyesight), and even includes the Bill Withers classic “Just the two of us” on the soundtrack.

Weighed down by a plot that is entirely secondary – the whole backstory as to why the Kid has a stash of drugs, and who it belongs to, feels almost incidental – Wolfs is the sort of slick, empty-headed entertainment that Hollywood (or in this case Apple) does well enough.

Abrams is charming as the innocent caught up among the high rollers, while Ryan is excellent in her extended cameo. As for Pitt and Clooney, well, they bring the sizzle if not the surprises.

Wolfs will start streaming on Apple TV+ on September 27.