'Wolfs' review: Brad Pitt, George Clooney don't disappoint in this action comedy

WHAT IT'S ABOUT Thirty years after Harvey Keitel turned up as the fixer The Wolf to clean up a mess for Jules and Vincent in "Pulp Fiction," George Clooney and Brad Pitt team up as a pair of similar fixers in "Wolfs."

The movie has no literal connection to Quentin Tarantino's universe — it's written and directed by Jon Watts, a filmmaker who has spent recent years making the "Spider-Man" movies — but there's a tangible spiritual bond.

Clooney and Pitt play characters who aren't given names, but show up at the same hotel suite after they're independently dispatched to make things right following the apparent death of a young man under shady circumstances.

Each man insists that he's the only one who can do this right. Of course, they'd never, under any circumstances, work together. So, we know where that's going.

Co-stars include Amy Ryan, Richard Kind and Austin Abrams.

MY SAY "Wolfs" never pretends to be interested in anything more than the basics. This is a movie about Clooney and Pitt bickering, incessantly, constantly, from start to finish, while looking cool in slick leather jackets and grizzly beards.

The movie offers exactly what it promises. 

If you're looking for a plot that doesn't require a guidebook to understand, or a story that says anything or means anything beyond that basic escapist framework, you won't find it here.

But, hey, there's something welcome about a movie that knows why it exists and doubles down on it. The stars get back to the essentials here; there's no pomposity, no great ambition, no purpose beyond playing off each other. 

The same goes for the writer-director, after all those years in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, where the spectacle is the whole point. "Wolfs" is crisply written and appropriately small in scale, leaving the focus on the actors and their relationship.

Clooney and Pitt seem to heavily enjoy the chance to do this together, practically winking and smirking the whole time, fully aware that the movie's as much about their own long-standing cinematic partnership (which spans the "Ocean's 11" movies and more) as their characters. "You're basically the same guy," one person tells them on-screen.

Even during action scenes involving New York City car chases and shootouts, Watts keeps the movie self-contained and his camera squarely on the actors.

  There's a lot of discourse these days about what movie stardom even means anymore. In the streaming age, where intellectual property and familiar content often matters more for the bottom line than the names above the title, the whole notion that people might prioritize a movie because of the talent involved can seem antiquated.

So even if it might be old-fashioned, and maybe not what the times demand, once in a while it's nice to encounter a movie like "Wolfs" that pushes back against those prevailing winds.

BOTTOM LINE: It's a movie all about its star duo and they don't disappoint.