' ' Cinema Romantico: Wolfs

Monday, October 21, 2024

Wolfs


A nameless cleaner (George Clooney), a guy who “makes problems go away,” as the celebrated writer and editor Elaine Benes once described the ambiguous profession, is summoned to a luxury hotel where the tryst of the New York District Attorney (Amy Ryan) has gone wrong, leaving a kid (Austin Abrams) she picked up in the lobby apparently dead on the floor after an accident. The cleaner is just getting to work when lo and behold, another nameless cleaner (Brad Pitt) knocks on the door, having been dispatched by the hotel upon seeing the apparent death on a surveillance camera. Both men work alone, both men assume this is their job, both men take great umbrage at the mere existence of the other one, though eventually, by reasons both pointless and paramount, they are ordered to team up. It’s a Meet Cute, in other words, and it’s why even if director Jon Watts’s movie is hearkening back to the hearty chemistry developed between Clooney and Pitt on the Ocean’s movies, “Wolfs” hearkens back even further, all the way to 1996 and Clooney playing opposite Michelle Pfeiffer in “One Fine Day.” “Wolfs” is One Fine Evening. There are bromances, and there are dad movies, and this becomes a shrewd merger of the two: a dadmance. True, I’m not a dad, but in nearing 50, I’m in the proper age range, and so perhaps everything I say should be sprinkled with a few grains of salt. I stand by all of it, nonetheless; “Wolfs” rocks!

The nameless men’s clean-up grows more complicated upon the discovery of several cocaine bricks in the hotel room and then more complicated, still, when the apparent dead kid wakes up. Turns out the kid, who like the cleaners never gets a proper name, had been signed up to deliver the drugs on something like a whim and now the nameless cleaners’ respective bosses tell them to safely return the drugs to avoid further complications, forcing them to cut a comic swatch across New York at night to clean up two messes. This is all rather inconsequential, of course. I lost count of how many times one of the cleaners declares “doesn’t matter” when other one, or the kid, tries getting to the bottom of things. Theoretically, the kid’s looming fate is meant to inject some drama, but despite a spirted performance by Abrams, his character merely exists a youthful counterpoint to the two older men and as the fulcrum bringing them together. Still, if the stakes are low, they are rendered with panache, by the performers and the director. Romantic comedies tend to be plot based, but this is one that succeeds in the mirth of its rendering, airy and light despite the bursts of violence. Yes, kids, dads can be all vibes too.

There is a delightful and nimble mid-movie chase sequence, maybe too nimble, really, given the aches and pains of the aging cleaners, but where Watts really excels is in the myriad dialogue sequences tending to involve a bickering Clooney and Pitt. The rhythm of the cutting mirrors the rhythm of the wordplay though just as often Watts takes advantage of the two men in space, framing them together in a variety of ways rather than just relying on an abundance of shot-reverse shots, underlining two characters who are stuck together, yes, but also the familiar electricity of his leading men. Withering looks, supercilious body language, disdainful ripostes, this all comes in comic droves, and rather than tamp down the notion of two movie stars in these roles, “Wolfs” leans into it, as the lack of character names suggests, slyly effusing the sense that we are, in fact, watching Clooney and Pitt as much as a couple lone wolfs. That sounds meta, but it’s not overly so, not like “Ocean’s Twelve,” a movie I cherish, and which came in for accusations of being smug and self-impressed as I’m sure this one will. How ever the drink tastes to you, man. Like “Ocean’s Twelve,” I saw friends having the time of their lives on screen, and that’s what I saw in “Wolfs,” brought home in a wry conclusion functioning as the Movie Stars’ last stand. 

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