‘Wolfs’ review: George Clooney and Brad Pitt reunite as begrudging buddies

When it was announced George Clooney and Brad Pitt would team up for their first film together in more than 10 years, Hollywood’s studio sharks were probably drooling with excitement. There was doubtless further delirium when Jon Watts, the director of Tom Holland’s blockbusting Spider-Man trilogy, was confirmed behind the camera. It’s fair to say Wolfs arrives to sky-high expectations and the hope it won’t be a howler.

It all starts one night in a swanky New York City penthouse hotel suite when the district attorney Margaret (Amy Ryan) calls a fixer (Clooney) to remove a dead body and clean up her room. A 20-something man – whom Margaret insists is “not a prostitute” has evidently died having jumped around on the bed and hit his head on a mobile mini-bar when he fell off. Into the death room and farcical situation comes another unnamed fixer Nick (Pitt), this time called by the watching hotel owner, voiced with typical steel by Frances McDormand. The pair bicker and grudgingly agree to work together under duress before sending Margaret home to her daughter.

The dapper chaps soon find four kilos of heroin in the young man’s bag and get him down to the car park where they are shocked to find he isn’t quite as dead as they thought – he’d evidently sampled some of the smack and overdosed after he hit the booze cart up in the room, which had knocked him out to such an extent he’d appeared deceased. The pair trot off to a dodgy doctor they know in Chinatown and before long a safari-themed motel room where they find out why their charge has bricks of drugs and what they need to do about it.

Of course, there’s a drug boss, his daughter’s lively wedding reception and a subsequent shoot-out or two, while our smooth duo trade quips and look cool in black leather jackets. The dialogue and action moves with pace and it’s such fun to see two genuine movie stars swagger about being charismatic, trading barbs, getting in and out of scrapes. It’s not like the one-night noir setting is particularly original – indeed, any NYC film taking place on one night will do well to compare to Martin Scorsese’s wild 1985 romp, After Hours, a film far more characterful and weirder than this. But that’s OK.

Despite its superficially dark material, Wolfs isn’t meant to be difficult or challenging, it’s just an enjoyable time hanging out with some chilled, reassuringly handsome gents as they get to the bottom of their not-a-murder mystery. When they eventually do and all the strands are explained, it’s quite hard to follow how things all connect up but it doesn’t really matter. By that point viewers will have gladly accepted the state of things – sometimes a cosy night in watching an easy film is the best remedy for dealing with the world’s woes, as it is in this case.