Something On Sunday: "Wolfs" and the Absence Of Women.

It's not a film about "cleaners," it's a film about men growing old and needing each other.

There is a moment in the AppleTV+ film “Wolfs” where an Albanian gangster — at some point Hollywood decided the Albanians were the new Russians — realizes a deeply held secret.

George Clooney and Brad Pitt, two “lone wolves” who clean up the messes of other people, aren’t really wolfs at all.

“You are buddies!”

That, in the film’s plot, is a reason to get shot. It’s also just funny to hear.

Ah, yes, the buddy film. Not to be confused with the bro-tastic film.

“Wolfs,” an exceedingly expensive film that Apple financed and gave a very limited theatrical release to — less than a week — moved from theaters on Sept. 20 to television on Sept. 27. If you’re curious about the film, written and directed by Jon Watts (the “Spider-Man” movies), it’s entertaining but very “mid,” which I think in today’s parlance is a much nicer way to say mediocre. And that’s apt, because “Wolfs” is more than mediocre (but not more than mid), because it’s a revelation of sorts — not for what it’s dramatizing, but what it is projecting, (seemingly without knowing it).

The central characters in the film, Clooney and Pitt, don’t have names, really. They are listed as “Margaret’s Man” (Clooney) and “Pam’s Man” (Pitt). Margaret is Amy Ryan, a fantastic actress who gets a very, very limited time on screen. And Pam is an unseen Frances McDormand. The only other woman of note is Poorna Jagannathan, who plays June, who is on screen even less than Ryan.

Women, in “Wolfs,” aren’t really necessary.

On the surface, “Wolfs” is a movie that got made so that Clooney and Pitt can be on the screen together, while the audience can watch Clooney and Pitt on that screen together, riffing, oozing chemistry, two heart-throbs of a certain age (Clooney 63, Pitt 60), rakishly heading into, if not winter, then the late fall of their lives, in a way that most actresses their age don’t get a chance to, at least not without plastic surgery.

They’ve both been in the same movies before, of course (“Ocean’s Eleven,” “Ocean’s Twelve” and “Ocean’s Thirteen”) but those were 23, 20 and 17 years ago, and Father Time is undefeated, even for Clooney and Pitt and even with minor plastic surgery.

Plus, Hollywood is forever infatuated with casting big names together, but it’s one thing to be in an ensemble like the “Ocean’s” trilogy, and quite another to be two heavyweights in the ring, stoic figures, essentially alone. So, the “Wolfs” casting was a big deal. And that casting made the film a big deal.

(Pitt looks to have received top billing — but you can do funny things with spacing words on a screen to lessen the impact, and despite only being three years younger, in “Wolfs” Pitt is portrayed as definitively younger; more established cleaner to Clooney’s fading cleaner.)

The point is, “Wolfs” exists to see Clooney and Pitt in the same frame. And they are, roughly 90 percent of the time.

But in pulling off this stunt, other issues get revealed. The absence of women, for starters.

Young Austin Abrams (28, but looking here more like 21) is arguably the third star of the film, playing the Kid, who stumbles into and mucks up the work of the wolfs. Ryan and Jagannathan are barely there; McDormand’s voice even less so.

There have been plenty of films where famous actresses are paired together in a similar fashion to “Wolfs,” sometimes with limited appearances by men, but those films are generally making a pretty clear point — this is about female empowerment, or it’s a girl’s trip/wedding weekend, or it’s “Ocean’s Eight,” inverting the original concept.

“Wolfs” is not outwardly saying to the audience, or selling itself as, “two aging men do one last job” (or two jobs, depending on whether there’s a sequel, which seems unlikely). No, “Wolfs” is very much telegraphing exactly what it believes itself to be — a film about two highly regarded “cleaners,” two lone wolves who fix other people’s messes for a very high fee, who are now entangled by circumstance and must work together.

Not a message film.

A buddy film.

If that’s how you view it, well, congratulations, now you know why “Wolfs” didn’t get a lengthy theatrical release.

Viewed differently, it’s certainly more interesting. What if “Wolfs” was really a movie centered on this idea: What are we going to do about men?

Men are odd. The enlightened world is not just moving in that direction but has arrived there. Men cause damage. They are problematic. Well yes of course there are good ones, duh, but the broad strokes of defining men lean toward the fact that they are, almost en masse, having a very difficult time skidding into the realization that they are not the center of the universe, not saviors, not leaders by default, not even exceptionally useful.

It’s nearly 2025 — the fantastic promised future! — and lots of men, particularly the ones powerful enough to do damage with a notion, don’t think women should have a say over their own bodies. So, yes, in the arc of history, where we are but a literal moment in time before turning to dust, we are there.

So much for the progress that was promised.

The Clooney and Pitt characters are essentially governed by women without even knowing it. And “Wolfs” seems to accidentally play with the idea that once some men get older, they get more pathetic, more pitiable, lost, perhaps even incrementally enlightened, to the point where some begrudging acceptance of them is on the table for consideration.

Key words in there: “accidentally play with.”

I don’t think Jon Watts aimed for any of that, however. He just wanted Clooney and Pitt in the same frame and he wrote banter for them that would entertain in the context that two dangerous cleaners, one a bit older than the other (double the amount of Advil jokes), have to learn to get along and have each other’s creaky back.

On the face of it — the same old. Pun actually not intended.

But what the banter in “Wolfs” also says is this — most men don’t really know how to talk to each other. Conversation is stunted. Connection is elusive. They both can’t be right. Talking is only easy if you’re in a bar talking sports.

“Wolfs” does suggest that if these two intractable forces — Clooney and Pitt — just spend enough time together, a begrudging bond will take hold. It’s Hollywood, so it always does.

(Of course that just leads to an even more cliched end to the movie, but whatever.)

I looked at “Wolfs” more like a social scientist would. These two peacocks are lost; too much ego to see their real, fading, selves. They are still delusional about Jagannathan’s character, June, especially after they realize they both use her particular skillset (June makes it clear that, no, she hasn’t slept with the other).

These men are buddy-bound to each other in the end, and “Wolfs” wants to make that the heartwarming point, even as it closes soon after with more predictable macho posturing. It’s not hard, as the credits roll, to imagine that Clooney and Pitt’s characters will become best friends (if they live), and grow even closer and more important to each other in, say, five or so years.

The film literally leaves you thinking that. And I did think about that. Which led to imagining these guys at 68 and 65, recounting old capers, long lost jobs they fixed and survived. June didn’t marry either of them, of course. They are now two lonely wolves.

Some older men, if they have longtime spouses, will cling to that bond (in both the good ways and the bad ways) until they die. Social scientists point out, though, that most older men are particularly prone to group together as friends, preferring their own company to that of women.

Maybe they never understood women, or appreciated women, or had the communication tools to befriend groups of women. Maybe they lie to themselves around a card table that they don’t need women anymore, when it’s much more likely women decided ages ago these kind of men weren’t worth the hassle and effort.

I liked “Wolfs” best by imagining it in that darker, more soulful, realistic framework; two lions on the verge of winter, unconsciously working out and preparing for how they will ultimately learn to live in a world with an absence of women.