George Clooney and Brad Pitt are frenemies in Wolfs

At the 81st Venice International Film Festival, the AppleTV+ production Wolfs, starring George Clooney and Brad Pitt, is presented out of competition. The film connects with another AppleTV+ release, which came out less than a month earlier, featuring Matt Damon and Casey Affleck. The Instigators, written by Affleck with Chuck MacLean and directed by Doug Liman, tells the story of two ordinary men—a former marine and an ex-con—who get involved in a robbery out of financial desperation but are unsure of what they are doing. In Wolfs, however, the protagonists are professionals, experts who are called in when something needs fixing, whether it’s making a body disappear or cleaning up a crime scene.

Although the professions and skills of the characters in the two films are quite different, what unites them is not only the genre they belong to, the buddy movie, where the protagonists start as enemies and, very predictably, become friends. Rather, it’s the way in which the four actors choose and agree to portray men who have long passed their forties and aren’t afraid to admit it. The aches and pains of aging are the funniest aspects of the film written and directed by Jon Watts, who until now has been best known for his work with Tom Holland in the MCU Spider-Man films. A comedy that plays with the characters’ egos and how, despite not having lost their edge, they still need to put on glasses to read an address on a pager or require pills and medication to fight back pain.

Clooney and Pitt, much like Casey Affleck and Matt Damon, distance themselves from the memory of the slick team that, in the early 2000s, never missed a beat in Steven Soderbergh’s Ocean’s Eleven trilogy. They make you reflect on the passing decades and how, for this quartet of actors, it might be liberating to be able to laugh at themselves, doing so with a less effective, but still enjoyable The Instigators, while putting the pedal to the metal for an excellent piece of entertainment like Wolfs.

Joining the Hollywood compañeros duo is a new addition who holds his own alongside the stars, actually determining the rhythm and balance of a duo that, in the end, suddenly becomes a trio without feeling forced. Austin Abrams is the young man the character who is believed to be dead, but instead of disposing of the body, they find themselves chasing him, alive and well, through the cold streets of New York. A silent yet vibrant city for a work that unfolds over a single night, forever changing the lives of the protagonists.

Arrogant, touchy, and distrustful of anyone buzzing around them, the characters played by Brad Pitt and George Clooney—whose names are deliberately not revealed—have been trained in a sort of monasticism made of sacrifices and an isolated life. Both hired for a mission and thus breaking the codes of their own protocol, they realize that perhaps they missed having a bit of company during all those years of work, and it must be nice to have someone to rely on. Teasing each other with quips and not sparing simple but sharp jokes—Pitt’s middle finger in one of the closing scenes is unoriginal but worth all our laughs—Wolfs leaves with an open ending and two hopes: first, that in real life, it’s never too late to find a friend, and second, that in an era of sequels, the one already announced for Watts’ film will be one that’s taken seriously.