REVIEW:
Clooney. Pitt. We love these guys. We love them together. But that doesn’t mean the product they turn out when working together is always great. Wolfs, for example, is a movie that is more about trying to be smart and thinking it’s smart than actually being smart. You see, this one isn’t really all that different than other movies that came before it in the genre. And it certainly doesn’t do much to make itself stand out.
The stars here, are playing two lone-wolf fixers. When an accidental drug overdose and death happens in a hotel room, they are both called in. One (Clooney,) is called by the client, the woman who rented the room (the always great Amy Ryan.) She’s a senator, and being caught with this dead guy in her hotel room could ruin her career. The other fixer (Pitt) is called by the hotel manager who has cameras in the rooms and saw everything. The two of these guys both show up, are shocked to find the other one there, and then go to work.
The first act of the movie takes place in the hotel room, and it’s pretty good. Between the claustrophobic and confined environment, and the eerie music, it sets the movie up just right. But pretty soon the guys are out on the street either chasing after a target or trying to recover something, and it starts to lose momentum.
The thing about this movie is, it always looked like it would be familiar, even from the trailers. But it looked like it would be Michael Clayton meets Mr and Mrs Smith. What I mean by that is it looked like it would be what story out as a low key movie about two fixers (which it does,) and end up being about how they have to work together and team up because they become the targets. And we don’t really get that second part. We don’t get the climactic action and excitement that we were hoping for. Instead, we get a sort of cop out ending that is definitely an homage to the end of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.
And regarding the familiar idea, this movie definitely is familiar, but not in terms of mirroring the end of Mr and Mrs Smith, or any movie where the hunters become the hunted. Instead, this one feels like the next evolution of the Oceans movies. That comes from the way these actors talk, with the short-hand between them, finishing each others sentences and knowing exactly what the other is talking about even when we, the audience, don’t. It makes sense here, since they are in the same line of work, but it still feels like something we’ve seen before.