The last time we saw them together in a film they were in Burn after reading, the 2008 black comedy by the Coen brothers in which they played, respectively, a paranoid cop and a scheming personal trainer grappling with secreted government documents and a Coen-style mess.
Fifteen years later, the two super stars George Clooney and Brad Pitt return to star in a new action comedy directed by Jon Watts, Wolfs, which premiered at the Venice Film Festival (out of competition) and debuts Sept. 27 on Apple TV+.
The story is the surreal (and quite funny) one of two organized crime “fixers. “Clooney explained that the title of the film comes from the name of the character played by Harvey Keitel in Quentin Tarantino’s masterpiece, Pulp fiction. Remember the line “I’m Mr. Wolf and I solve problems”? Here, the job of the two main characters in Wolfs is precisely to “fix” “awkward” situations, such as finding a dead body on their hands.
In the film it happens that a prominent New York City civil servant (she is Amy Ryan) who has taken a young boy (Austin Abrams) into her home finds herself in trouble when confronted with what apparently looks like his body. The “wolf” Jack (Clooney) is called in to settle the matter, but due to some mix-up soon after another one, the “wolf” Nick (Pitt), arrives as well. The two “wolves” are thus forced to work together in spite of themselves, as the affair gets out of hand and the tale plays with unparalleled irony on the two planes of the “clash” between two superstar “professionals,” who are competing in fiction as well as in the reality of their lives as actors.
“Jon Watts pitched us this very funny idea, and it seemed like a good reason for us to come back and make a film together, also because as I get older, working with people I like becomes more and more important,” Pitt recounted. And Clooney: “The film has a very good rhythm, very theatrical, made of jokes that chase each other, shooting it was great.” And then he joked, “In Burn after reading I got to shoot him in the face and it was beautiful, we did it again this time, unfortunately the scene was cut.”
Clooney, who along with Pitt also figures as a producer, then also wanted to say a few words about choosing the streaming platform rather than the classic theater. “When I was young there were 64 TV stations, now there are 700 and as a result there is much more work for everyone. The film industry needs streaming: currently, as we know, there is a kind of revolution going on, but I think it is positive, especially for young people.”
The article <i>Wolfs</i> with George Clooney and Brad Pitt comes to Apple TV+ comes from TheNewyorker.
