I’ll admit it; I was a little skittish when I hit play on my screener of , the new Apple original crime comedy starring George Clooney and Brad Pitt, after getting burned by a succession of disappointing feature films backed by the iPhone maker. I don’t need to list all of them here, but you know the ones I’m talking about: Misfires like , , and . Those failures, in fact, are reportedly the reason why Apple decided to on a wide theatrical release for , which hits on Friday.
I’m happy to report, however, that director Jon Watts’ tightly paced and well-written dramedy — which is about two “fixers” hired to clean up the same mess, much to each other’s chagrin — was not only plenty enjoyable. There’s a quasi- vibe throughout, which is to say that is completely unserious, witty, and sporadically violent. It’s also loads of fun watching Clooney and Pitt zing each other throughout the film — Clooney’s older Fixer #1 being deeply suspicious of the cavalier, too-cool-for-school attitude that pervades Pitt’s Fixer #2.
One of my favorite scenes, and this speaks to the -esque vibe that I’m talking about, actually comes towards the end and involves a Croatian gangster in a stylish white suit, angered by the two fixers’ treachery. They’ve just left a den of Croatian baddies, pretending not to know each other even though they’ve both done work for the same gangster’s boss in the past. The gangster, having seen through their ruse, proceeds to spray the.