What do you suppose the upper age limit on “fixer” is? There has to be one, right? Just like you don’t want an assassin with dementia, you don’t want a guy who deals with disposing dead bodies who is incapable of lifting a dead body, you follow? I ask this because Brad Pitt is currently 60 and George Clooney is currently 63. And, fun as Wolfs can be, I don’t think either man is quite suited for this role any longer.
But I could be wrong; Pitt was clearly fine playing a hitter-in-crisis for Bullet Train, which came out in 2022. What’s the diff? I don’t know the answer to that question, but I do know there will come a time when these roles are no longer believable – we are seeing such in both Liam Neeson and Robert DeNiro – and that time is sooner than later.
Jack (Clooney) and Nick (Pitt) are professional fixers, both of whom work alone … as in “lone wolf,” get it? On this night, however, they’ve both been summoned independently to clean up a mess left by Margaret (Amy Ryan), an important person having hotel fun that got out of hand. The unknown corpse is just a Kid (Austin Abrams). Why have two men been summoned for this one-man job? That’s part of the mystery,
Soooooooo, turns out there’s good news and there’s bad news, which do you want first?
The good news is Kid isn’t dead, meaning, theoretically, nothing has to be “cleaned.”
The bad news is Kid was carrying four bricks of heroin. Uh oh.
And the problem here is two guys who are used to working alone are now in this pickle together. Luckily, fixer is a profession that tends to attract a certain type of person, not a range, so Jack and Nick are
fairly similar and, hence, should work well together. How long do you suppose until these two figure it out?
Wetwork or no, both Brad Pitt and George Clooney retain a certain charismatic charm that will make most movies they’re in watchable. This is exactly how I found Wolfs: Watchable. It is a little better than that, but not a lot better than that. I am wondering now if Ocean’s 2 here were substituted for actors of the correct age, say Jake Gyllenhaal and Chris Pratt, would the film still work? I’m not sure. So much of this screenplay is about Jack and Nick slooooooowly realizing they need to work in tandem that there’s a delicate balancing act between waiting for that to happen and being put off watching two A-Listers squabble like hens. My guess is lesser actors (which may or may not include Gyllenhaal and Pratt) would have trouble finding that balance.
The solution is simple, of course: if you have the coup of casting both Clooney and Pitt, write a screenplay where they both can be charming immediately. Then it might even work if you don’t have that coup.
Two fixers, the first Nick, the next Jack
Had a problem in need of attack
Both men work alone
But they’re gonna be shown
Survival requires having your back
Rated R, 108 Minutes
Director: Jon Watts
Writer: Jon Watts
Genre: “2001 called …”
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: Did you like Clooney and Pitt before? You’ll like them now.
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: “Aren’t they getting too old for this?”
