‘You take a job, you give your word and that word’s the measure of a man…’
Well, this is cinema in 2025. A film that sparked a huge bidding war in 2021 is unceremoniously dumped onto streaming three years later and then promptly forgotten about forever. Even the star power of George Clooney and Brad Pitt can’t elevate Wolfs into something more than a light confection. Something to be enjoyed for 108 minutes and then consigned to the dustbin of history. Does any of it matter? Is this film profound enough to inspire such existential questions? Dear reader… who cares? Not this guy…
When Margaret (Amy Ryan), a Manhattan District Attorney, finds herself in a hotel room with a dead male prostitute, she panics and calls the number of a fixer (enter George Clooney). So far, so Pulp Fiction. Things become more complicated when a second fixer shows up (enter Brad Pitt) who has also been hired by a different party to clean up the same mess.
Marvel films are a lot of things but one thing that they are not (no matter how hard they try) is funny. I like Jon Watts’ Spider-Man trilogy but they aren’t funny. Not in any meaningful way. There is nothing clever or particularly witty there. The tragedy here is that Watts is presented with two of the greatest comic actors of their generation and barely wrings a laugh out of either of them. Wolfs clips along in a way that is compelling enough but it’s frustrating to think what Shane Black or the Coen brothers could have done with this same concept. Watts iteration is filmmaking by committee. It’s bland.
In the end, Wolfs is a safe film. Not bad. Not great. Destined to be nobody’s favourite movie. It came. It went. Nobody noticed. And now it is a mere footnote in the world of cinema.
