I’ll admit it; I was a little skittish when I hit play on my screener of Wolfs, the new Apple original crime comedy starring George Clooney and Brad Pitt, after getting burned by a succession of disappointing feature films backed by the iPhone maker. I don’t need to list all of them here, but you know the ones I’m talking about: Misfires like Argylle, Killers of the Flower Moon, and Napoleon. Those failures, in fact, are reportedly the reason why Apple decided to pull back on a wide theatrical release for Wolfs, which hits Apple TV+ on Friday.
I’m happy to report, however, that director Jon Watts’ tightly paced and well-written dramedy — which is about two “fixers” hired to clean up the same mess, much to each other’s chagrin — was not only plenty enjoyable. There’s a quasi-Barry vibe throughout, which is to say that Wolfs is completely unserious, witty, and sporadically violent. It’s also loads of fun watching Clooney and Pitt zing each other throughout the film — Clooney’s older Fixer #1 being deeply suspicious of the cavalier, too-cool-for-school attitude that pervades Pitt’s Fixer #2.
One of my favorite scenes, and this speaks to the Barry-esque vibe that I’m talking about, actually comes towards the end and involves a Croatian gangster in a stylish white suit, angered by the two fixers’ treachery. They’ve just left a den of Croatian baddies, pretending not to know each other even though they’ve both done work for the same gangster’s boss in the past. The gangster, having seen through their ruse, proceeds to spray their car with bullets while screaming: “You are not wolves … you are BUDDIES!” (Don’t worry, I haven’t given anything away).
If you watch the trailer below, it shouldn’t come as a surprise for me to tell you that there’s a lot more to the job that the two fixers get hired for than meets the eye. The mess they have to clean up keeps getting … wait for it … bigger! The body they thought they’d have to dispose of turns out to be not very dead and actually connected to a potential drug deal. Various shootouts, assorted hijinks, and chases across town ensue. Overall, I found Wolfs to be lots of fun, as long as you don’t go into it expecting any more than that.
Meanwhile, there are two oddities about Wolfs that I need to briefly address.
Let’s start with the title. Obviously, put more than one wolf together and you’ll need to spell that grouping as “wolves” (duh). Here, though, Wolfs is meant to reflect the awkward pairing of one lone wolf with another, which also leads to the awkward spelling. It’s confusing, I get it. But I can actually forgive that choice much more quickly than I can this second one that absolutely confounds me:
Apple, for crying out loud, I would have loved to see Wolfs in the theater! This one is what I’d have rather seen on the big screen, not some convoluted 100-hour opus from an octogenarian director that no one can say no to anymore. Don’t get me wrong; I’m glad Wolfs exists at all, and that it can be conveniently watched from home. But still. I’d have definitely come out of seeing this one in the theater a happy camper.
