I finally saw Wolfs yesterday, and I found it…uhm, moderately absorbing. It’s a dry, droll “crime comedy” (i.e., the kind you might snicker at) that unfolds in grade-A fashion, and while I was never riveted or excited it never pissed me off.

The laid-back, wiseacre performances from George Clooney and Brad Pitt are quite skillful and effective, and the supporting cast (which includes Austin Abrams, a dorky-looking guy I’d never heard of, and Zlatko Buric, the fat, white-haired Triangle of Sadness guy) are certainly interesting. Plus the production values are above-average.

I therefore felt placated except at the very end when the soundtrack played Bill Withers‘ “Just The Two Of Us“…fuck you! Take your cloying suggestion that a Wolfs sequel might be a good idea….ram it sideways!

There’s a nifty little scene in which Richard Kind, playing Abrams’ oddball dad, goes into a riff about Frank Sinatra‘s notorious unwillingness to perform more than one take while shooting a scene. Kind talks about Sinatra refusing to fully give it up for the shooting of the stacked-deck Queen oF Hearts sequence in The Manchurian Candidate (’62) despite the dp (Lionel Lindon) having informed director John Frankenheimer that he’d screwed up the shot by failing to capture Sinatra in sharp focus. This was appalling behavior on Frank’s part. The blurry MCU of him talking to Laurence Harvey throws you off every time. Your mind keeps saying, “Why is Harvey in focus but Sinatra isn’t?”