Clooney-Pitt vehicle a reminder Hollywood only has room for aging male stars

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This article was published 28/09/2024 (353 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A sleek-looking star vehicle for George Clooney and Brad Pitt, Wolfs (now streaming on Apple TV+) kicks off when two nameless “cleaners” — those discreet fixers dispatched to make crime scenes go away — are called in to do the same job. Cue a wayward corpse, a bag of drugs, conflicting client demands, a turf war between rival New York mobs and a seemingly straightforward gig that spirals into a night of complete chaos.

Billed as an action-comedy, this easygoing flick also feels like an official announcement that Pitt and Clooney have entered a new stage. At ages 60 and 63, respectively, they are not so much wolves as silver foxes.

The whole “silver-fox” gambit was brought to perfection — as were so many things — by Cary Grant. Having briefly considered retiring in the 1950s, the 51-year-old Grant was lured back to the screen by Alfred Hitchcock, who wanted him to star in To Catch a Thief.

Grant went on to do several later-in-life, light-comic capers, with a south-of-France tan, a little greying at the temples and a lot of self-aware flair. He sometimes wore his own clothes — and why not, since he was, at this point, simply the world’s best-dressed man. In a striped jersey or grey flannels, he seemed completely at ease with himself, just loaded with self-deprecating charm and ready to have some fun with his still-brilliant star power.

Outside of Grant, however, the silver-fox genre can be tricky. This might explain why reviews of Wolfs veer from raves (“effortless screen charisma”) to roasts (“smug and self-satisfied,” “unbearable”).

Some things work. Playing veteran criminal professionals, Clooney and Pitt are leaning into the crinkles at the corners of their eyes and the salt-and-pepper in their hair. The script openly admits the guys are getting a little older.

There are jokes about their lower backs — they need to “lift with their legs” when moving bodies. There are gags about their changing eyesight — they need to get out their reading glasses when checking urgent pager messages.

There’s a little light spoofing of the tough-guy roles Clooney and Pitt once played seriously in films like The American or Spy Games. Take the incessant teasing about the term “lone wolf,” for instance, the central joke in Wolfs being right there in the title. The plural of “wolf” is, in fact, “wolves,” but each man is confidently convinced he is absolutely singular, he’s irreplaceable, he’s the only guy in the city who can do what he does.

In fact, these fellas turn out to be comically similar. “You’re basically the same guy,” says the goofy kid (Austin Abrams) they reluctantly end up to babysitting. Forced to work together, the two men — who are called, for complicated reasons, only Pam’s Man (Pitt) and Margaret’s Man (Clooney) — spend most of their time bickering, in a muttered barrage of one-upmanship, passive-aggressive digs and unsolicited driving directions.

There’s also some meta commentary on the men’s real-life star status. As Pam’s Man snarks about Margaret’s Man, “He’s, like, one of those guys, you know? He’s had his moment, where he was the go-to guy, but that wore off a long time ago and no one’s told him yet.”

Significantly, he’s saying this to a woman (Poorna Jagannathan), who knows both men and has clearly had it up to here with both of them. “Oh, I’m familiar with the type,” she responds, with an emphasis that’s completely lost on Pam’s Man, who’s a bit of a knucklehead.

Of course, gags about Clooney or Pitt being washed-up in their 60s are somewhat undercut by reports the two men took home multimillion-dollar paydays for their Wolfs work. (The New York Times reported $35 million each, which Clooney has disputed by saying it was “millions and millions and millions less.” And, yeah, George, that still sounds like a lot.)

That might be the trickiest thing about the silver-fox genre. It’s still a men’s club.

It’s easy to joke about obsolescence when it’s not really an issue. It’s easy to relax gracefully into your age when it’s not a liability.

Wolfs does have a lot of loose-goosey charm, and it does offer a sneaky send-up of cinematic machismo. But I’d laugh harder if I knew that women could be silver foxes, too.

alison.gillmor@freepress.mb.ca