Review: "Wolves" & the NYC Night Movie

They don't make movies like this anymore -- well, okay, they do, but they don't play in movie theaters anymore; instead, they pop up on streaming.

But it's always great to see a fast-paced, character-centered flick with great movie stars -- especially when it involves them running around NYC.

Wolves stars George Clooney and Brad Pitt -- thirty-years removed from their starmaking roles on the TV show ER and in the movie Interview With the Vampire, respectively -- as two "cleaners" or "wolves" (like the one Harvey Keitel played in that other 194 classic Pulp Fiction), whose job is to mop up crime scenes, dispose of bodies and evidence, and make sure that the guilty get away with it and justice is denied to the victim. In Wolves, this crime scene involves a dead kid, a backpack full of drugs, and a hysterical female District Attorney (played by the wonderful Amy Ryan) who is running for reelection and needs this problem solved pronto. 

The twist in this movie is that these two now middle-aged wolves are called to clean up the same crime scene unbenowst two each other. And when they clean up the scene and get the dead kid's body out of the downtown Manhattan hotel they were called to -- well, it all goes sideways and mayhem ensues when it turns out the kid really isn't dead.

Wolves then turns into a very fun, almost two hour yarn of car chases, shootouts, sleazy nightclubs, oddball characters, snappy dialogue, chowing down in diners, and everything that makes a good pulpy story. Most of all, it's great to see Clooney and Pitt act their hearts out, their chemistry palpable, in an original story not based on IP. It's just an entertaining movie. Remember those?

But other big thing I love about Wolves, as you might guess, its that it's a real NYC and a real NYC night movie. The story starts downtown but before you know it our heroes are zooming around Chinatown and Lower Manhattan, then they're out in the wilds of Queens. It's a movie that gives you a sense of the whole city. 

And the whole thing takes place at night, when the city falls into a sense of sexy mystery, a place of danger and excitement, a whole other NYC. I think it's fair to say that Wolves joins the company of other brilliant NYC night movies like After Hours, Taxi Driver, Night on Earth, While the City Sleeps, the Whit Stillman classics Metropolitan and The Last Days of Disco, The Warriors, Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist -- heck, I'll even throw in Eyes Wide Shut.