Brad Pitt & George Clooney in Light, Cunning Actioner

Can film stars keep cool ceaselessly?

That appears to be the massive existential query underscoring the intelligent, impeccably directed if quite flimsy motion comedy Wolfs, which reunites Brad Pitt and George Clooney, who most memorably chummed it up collectively within the Ocean’s trilogy. Again then they had been two of the most important actors on the planet, and even an effort just like the Coen brothers’ Burn After Studying — which marks their final onscreen team-up — grossed over $160 million whereas remaining completely offbeat and albeit uncommercial.

Greater than a decade later, each stars are of their 60s and the film enterprise clearly isn’t what it was. Living proof: Wolfs, which was presupposed to be launched broad by Apple, will roll out for a one-week restricted theatrical run earlier than going straight to streaming. Is it as a result of Pitt and Clooney can not draw the crowds they did of their heyday? Or is it as a result of Individuals not flock to see movies that aren’t primarily based on present IP? (Which begs one other query: Are Pitt and Clooney themselves a type of present IP?)

Both means it’s unlucky, as a result of Wolfs is a piece that deserves big-screen consideration — as an alternative of being seen in mattress on a MacBook that’s resting on prime of your crotch. Written and directed by Jon Watts, who, after a prolonged stint within the Marvel Universe, returns to the caper mode of his 2015 breakthrough Cop Automobile, the film has twists galore and showcases a slick, deadpan fashion you hardly see in Hollywood anymore. Each enjoyable and skinny on the identical time, it’s not about a lot ultimately besides the concept of reuniting Pitt and Clooney to see in the event that they nonetheless have their magic, which they largely do.

Each play “cleaners” or “fixers” — assume Jean Reno in La Femme Nikita or Harvey Keitel, the primary and most well-known Wolf, in Pulp Fiction — who get employed for a job that winds up stretching out for one lengthy, snowy and action-packed New York evening. That job entails serving to a district legal professional (Amy Ryan) eliminate a lifeless physique in her luxurious resort room, however it rapidly spirals into way more. The physique, in truth, just isn’t lifeless in any respect, and belongs to a gabby, nervous wreck of a child (Austin Abrams), who occurs to be carrying 4 kilos of heroine in his guide bag.

Pitt and Clooney (we’ll name them that since their characters haven’t any names) each declare to be the perfect and solely fixers within the metropolis — lone wolves who excel on the unattainable. Now they’ve been pressured to work collectively, and also you don’t should have seen Unhealthy Boys, 48 Hours, Deadly Weapon or a dozen different buddy motion comedies to determine that the 2 will go from being main antagonists to greatest friends, or no less than frenemies.

Watts teases out the stress and humor between them in each scene, getting loads of mileage off their slightest gestures or facial expressions, particularly throughout a couple of sequences the place there’s hardly any dialogue in any respect. Like in Cop Automobile, or his wonderful TV collection, The Outdated Man, the director has a knack for staging visible comedy and motion with only some photographs and cuts — the alternative of what most overshot motion films do.

At its greatest moments, Wolfs takes that fashion to excessive lengths, in what’s mainly a two-hander set on a lot of empty Manhattan streets, or inside Clooney’s comfortable BMW. Just a few different characters are introduced in, together with the aforementioned “child,” a physician (Poorna Jagannathan) figuring out of a restaurant in Chinatown, and an Albanian mob boss (Zlatko Burić) whose daughter’s marriage ceremony the 2 crash in a single over-the-top scene.

However like Pitt and Clooney, none of those characters seems like actual individuals. They’re occupants of a film world nearer to the ’90s-era meta-fictions of Tarantino than something actual or modern. Which signifies that whether or not they dwell or die, shoot each other or hug it up, end as besties or arch enemies, doesn’t appear to matter all that a lot.

This isn’t to say that Pitt and Clooney don’t fully carry the movie — they do it palms down from begin to end. However as crafty and well-made as Wolfs is, with its nonstop twists and glossy shoot ’em up sequences, maybe there isn’t all that a lot to hold ultimately.

As for the query on the prime of this assessment, at one level the child, who’s as nerdy a New Yorker as they arrive, tells Pitt and Clooney how cool they’re. And it’s true they do some very cool issues, like when Clooney luggage a physique within the resort room in a single fast swoop, brings it casually downstairs on a baggage rack and kicks it into the trunk of his Beemer. Even when, afterward, he and Pitt should concurrently take out their outdated man studying glasses, they appear cool as cucumbers.

However does everybody nonetheless assume that? In case you had been to ask a bunch of random youngsters or individuals of their 20s right this moment, it’s doable they don’t even know who the actors are or what movies they’ve performed. And it’s additionally fairly doable they don’t watch many movies in any respect anymore, in the event that they ever did.

And so if Wolfs is about something, maybe it’s about testing whether or not Hollywood stars exert the identical energy and fascination they did when films appeared to matter way more to most of the people. The outcomes of that check are but to be recognized, and Wolfs leaves us with a closing picture of Pitt and Clooney suspended collectively in motion, as if to say: In the event that they not have us, no less than they’ve one another.