George Clooney and Brad Pitt banter their way through ‘Wolfs,’ a caper comedy in need of more laughs

There are a few decent laughs in the caper comedy “Wolfs.” There’s also a smart one: the fact that its lead characters, played by George Clooney and Brad Pitt, are not named.
Why pretend this movie is anything but a vehicle for the actor-producers, firm pals in real life, to banter with each other on screen once again?
It’s been 16 years since they appeared together in “Burn After Reading,” the Coen brothers spy satire, and even longer since their “Ocean’s” heist trilogy. Movie fans love it when Clooney and Pitt conspire to make merry mayhem, and they’ve had to wait for it.
Incidentally, “Wolfs” marks an unofficial reunion with another key “Burn After Reading” co-star: Frances McDormand plays an unseen manager issuing commands over the phone to the underworld fixers played by Clooney and Pitt.
The dirty-deeds-done-not-cheap duo find themselves reluctantly in the same $10,000-per-night NYC hotel room as a horny Manhattan district attorney (Amy Ryan), whose boisterous tryst with a random Gen Z dude (Austin Abrams of “Euphoria”) left her with a bothersome body clad only in tighty-whities and gym socks.
Margaret is supposed to be a tough-on-crime DA, so speed, stealth and discretion are required. She dials the secret number of the brusque fixer played by Clooney, who arrives with blue latex gloves and get-’er-done instructions for body disposal, which involves a neat trick with a luggage cart that he’s inordinately proud of.
As Clooney gets to work, a knock on the door introduces a second fixer, played by Pitt, also wearing blue latex gloves.
There’s been a mix-up, perhaps not surprising since these sixtyish guys look and act alike: similar grey facial hair, black leather jackets, justifiable job-related paranoia and a macho dedication to working solo — hence the movie’s ungrammatical title, which also tips it hat to a character from “Pulp Fiction.”
In true buddy-comedy fashion, Clooney and Pitt become obliged to work together, even though they despise each other. Co-operation is forced upon them by two complicating factors: the dead dude is surprising alive and he has with him $250,000 worth of heroin that some impatient mobsters want returned. Things are not going to go as planned; the inclusion of Sade’s “Smooth Operator” on the jazzy soundtrack is meant to be ironic.
All of this is revealed or could be deduced from the snappy trailer for the film, which by rights should oblige writer-director Jon Watts, who directed Marvel’s most recent live-action Spider-Man movies, to come up with something imaginative and hilarious to sustain interest in his nearly two-hour film.
It should also inspire Clooney and Pitt to new comic heights of cinema comradeship, since “Wolfs” depends so much on their ability to make ruthless paranoid rivals seem amusing.
Watts and his leads don’t so much rise to the challenge as thumb their noses at it. They know people have come to the theatre not for yet another New York mob chase story (which the upcoming “Anora” does better, frankly), but to see Clooney and Pitt sniping at each other.
Which they do as only they can, flipping each other off with disdainful wisecracks and eye rolls in the best tradition of movie duos Redford and Newman, Lemmon and Matthau and, well, Clooney and Pitt.
Clooney, 63, and Pitt, 60, enjoyably mock their status as aging superstars, making light of back pain (Advil is their drug of choice) and poor vision (they both need reading specs).
Contributing to the film’s measured pace is the gorgeous cinematography by Larkin Seiple (“Everything Everywhere All at Once”). Seiple, who is also a whiz at lighting, makes the City That Never Sleeps look like the Town That Occasionally Naps. I’ve never seen New York with so little vehicular and pedestrian traffic, even for a story set late at night in the dead of winter.
“Wolfs” is a good-enough comedy built around winning relationships, which may explain why Apple has already decided to make a sequel — although it cancelled plans for a wide theatrical rollout of this one, so who knows what the iPhone maker really has in mind?
Fortunately for all concerned, relative big-screen newcomer Abrams, whom everybody calls Kid, turns out to be the Energizer Bunny incarnate, a motormouth who rarely stops talking and moving.
He turns “Wolfs” from a hangout picture it might otherwise be into something closer to the action comedy it wants to be.