Remember—of course you do—the sequence in Pulp Fiction where Jules and Vincent, after inadvertently shooting poor Marvin in the face in their car, summon a so-called “fixer,” known only as The Wolf and considered to be “the best,” who immediately and impeccably arrives to supervise the cleanup and disposal of both the car and body so that it was as if they had never existed? Now imagine what might happen if there happened to be a second fixer out there—one just as accomplished and dashing as The Wolf—who turned up at the scene expecting to take charge. Finally, imagine what all of that would be like if it turned out that the two guys—the Wolfs, if you will—didn’t like each other for reasons never quite articulated but who, through some kind of contrivance or another, were forced to work together to fight off some common adversary? Whatever you have conjured up in your mind based on the elements listed above, it would almost by default have to be better than Wolfs (get it?), a staggeringly banal star vehicle that will no doubt lure a lot of eyes to Apple TV for a couple of weeks to check it out before being completely and blessedly forgotten by everyone who saw it and, more likely than not, by many of those who made it as well.
In the luxury suite of an expensive New York hotel, powerful district attorney Margaret (Amy Ryan) has a problem—the young man that she invited up to spend the night with her is currently lying dead on the floor after a bloody accident involving a bar cart. She has been given a number for a guy who can fix such problems and who is supposed to be not just the best but the only person who does what he can do. She calls and a few minutes later, a knock of the door signals the arrival of the man himself—listed only in the credits as “Margaret’s Man” and played by George Clooney—who surveys the scene, gets the pertinent information out of her in a brusque manner and then gets to working getting rid of any evidence of what happened. After a couple of minutes, however, there is another knock at the door and sure enough, another fixer considered to be the top guy, “Pam’s Man” (Brad Pitt)—this one summoned by the unseen owner of the hotel who has been alerted to the goings-on via a security camera and who doesn’t want any trouble that might result in bad publicity. Despite their relatively rarefied field, the two guys have never seen or heard of each other before and take an instant disliking to each other that only intensifies once it is determined that they will work together to dispose of the problem.
The basic story elements introduced in this opening sequence—a woman covered in blood and in serious trouble, a body that needs to be taken out of a very public place without anyone knowing, two professionals who normally work solo having to come together—are actually kind of solid and could have theoretically been spun out in any number of interesting directions. Sadly, no sooner does writer-director Jon Watts set these elements up, he seems to go out of his way to dispose of them by sending Margaret on her way and establishing a screen relationship between the remaining two leads that is marked only by mutual antagonism (at least until they have to work together) and the running joke that they are so similar in nearly every imaginable way that they are practically interchangeable. Sure, there are some additional complications, including the discovery of a quarter-million dollars in drugs found in the room during the cleanup, warring gangs of Croatian and Albanian gangsters and some complications involving the body (which I will not reveal, though the trailer cheerfully does) but for the most part, it just offers up the sight of two guys trying to out-do each other in terms of ironic suavity while trying to extricate themselves from the situation they have found themselves in.
This is not the first movie that Clooney and Pitt have attempted to push through solely on the basis of their combined super-cool public personas, much in the way that Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and the other members of the Rat Pack did back in the day. However, if Ocean’s Eleven was their Ocean’s Eleven in this regard—one in which those personas were housed within a caper construct that provided reasonably gripping entertainment that didn’t tax one’s brain or patience too badly, then Wolfs is closer to something like 4 For Texas or How to Commit Marriage, largely worthless pieces of drivel in which the cool had long since curdled and the stars went through their increasingly dated schtick with all the concentration and intensity of a couple of guys who saw the production as interfering with the fun they could be having with the showgirls back at the Sands. Lord knows that both Clooney and Pitt have appeared in their fair share of misfired star vehicles in the past—some, like Ticket to Paradise and The Mexican, actually worse than this one—but I don’t know if they have ever been in one as sheerly lazy as this one and they can’t even pin the blame on Julia Roberts here. These are both smart guys and gifted actors and they must have realized at some point in the proceedings that none of it was working but nevertheless decided to plow ahead, perhaps content in the knowledge that by the time everyone else realized what a non-event the film was, the checks would have long since cleared. It is the kind of movie that seems to have been made only because the presence of stars of the caliber of Clooney and Pitt would ensure a high-profile rollout including prestigious festival slots and glossy magazine covers. (In this regard, perhaps the funniest joke to be had is that Apple, having previously vowed to give the film a full-fledged commercial release, has elected to squander all that hype by only giving it a brief one-week run in a handful of theaters before going directly to streaming next week.)
Other than the complete waste of the talents and star power of the two leads, Wolfs is never as clever or audacious as Watts clearly seems to believe it to be. Between the contrived banter, the too-quirky-by-half characters and a plot that is extraordinarily complicated without ever amounting to much of anything in the end, it feels like the kind of screenplay churned out back in the day by aspiring writers who went to see Pulp Fiction and fancied themselves as the next Tarantino, lacking only his creativity, wit and sense of dramatic style. Because there is no real sense of danger or tension to be had at any point in the proceedings, it is virtually impossible to develop any sort of interest in the story or the ciphers populating it and as a result of that, none of it ends up mattering at all. With the exception of a reasonably entertaining mid-film chase sequence, which is enlivened by the choice to stage it in a series of longer shots rather than relying on the usual quick-cut aesthetic that tends to reduce screen action to visual sludge, none of it ever really clicks and by the time that the story (which takes place entirely over the course of one long night) finally sputters to a halt, you may feel as wearily exhausted as the characters themselves.
Wolfs is so much the epitome of the sins of so many high-profile films made for streaming services of late that the closest thing it ever gets to a surprise is the fact that Mark Wahlberg somehow isn’t involved with it in some way. There was plenty of money to afford everything from the salaries for the two leads and Watts (coming off of his working helming the three recent Spider-Man films) to the Sade songs that make up the bulk of the soundtrack (presumably because the notion of a couple of self-styled smooth operators driving around while listening to “Smooth Operator” struck someone as devastatingly funny) but those are the kind of elements that are easy to acquire, especially with the backing of Apple. What all that money couldn’t buy, on the other hand, was the kind of genuine inspiration that is in precious short supply here—the kind that might have taken this project and made it into something worthy of the talents of its two leads. Aside from possibly inspiring viewers to reevaluate their feelings towards the scandalously underrated Ocean’s Twelve (which transcended its origins as a seemingly pointless sequel to a huge moneymaker to become a hilarious and head-spinning riff on its predecessor in the manner of Gremlins 2), there is absolutely nothing to this film that even the most indulgent of moviegoers would find tolerable, even when seen at home on a television or laptop. The whole thing is an increasingly enervating trifle—the kind that was probably a lot of fun to shoot, I suppose, but not nearly as much to actually sit through.