Wolf review.
Anothe full moon is rising. This cycle’s Full Moon Feature looks back at a movie that just turned 30. Jack Nicholson wolfs out (slowly) in Mike Nichols’ Wolf.
Classic movie reviews will contain spoilers.
Wolf
Directed by Mike Nichols
Screenplay by Jim Harrison and Wesley Strick
Starring Jack Nicholson, Michelle Pfeiffer, James Spader, Christopher Plummer, Kate Nelligan, Richard Jenkins and Om Puri
Wolf Review
Jack Nicholson is no stranger to the horror genre. Of course, your mind immediately goes to Stanley Kubrick’s masterpiece The Shining. Easily the most famous of Nicholson’s horror works. The late Roger Corman cast Nicholson in a trio of horror films early in his career. Parts in 1960’s Little Shop of Horrors and 1963’s The Terror and The Raven helped get a young Jack’s soon to be famous face in front of audiences. Mad Max creator George Miller would later cast Nicholson in 1987’s supernatural comedy The Witches of Eastwick. Michelle Pfeiffer costarred in Eastwick…and would do so again in the final horror role of Nicholson’s career…Mike Nichols’ Wolf.
Six roles are a drop in a bucket when set against Nicholson’s full filmography…but look at the names of directors he was working with in the genre. Kubrick. Miller. Nichols. Corman. Each was presented with an Academy Award at some point. Only Nichols can claim a Best Director statue…but Kubrick is one of the most highly regarded filmmakers of all time and Miller is still making classics to this day. Corman, the undisputed king of B-movies, received an honorary Oscar for his contributions to film. Those contributions include helping a laundry list of greats launch their career. Nicholson among them.
The appeal of seeing Jack Nicholson as a werewolf is the main selling point of Wolf. Mike Nichols helming a werewolf movie is the more interesting part. Sandwiched between The Remains of the Day and The Birdcage in his filmography…Wolf feels like an odd choice for the director. His attachment to the project only makes sense due to his frequent collaborations with Nicholson. Wolf would mark their fourth (and final) film together. The result is a classic looking picture…with no teeth.
As with all Full Moon Feature’s…we’re mostly concerned with how the movie uses its werewolves. In the case of Wolf, the answer is very much “hit and miss”. It has a few interesting ideas. The best of which is utilizing the full moon as a ticking clock. Once Will (Nicholson) is bitten by a wolf…he only has until the next full moon until the wolf inside consumes him completely. The un-full moons that rise beforehand leave him in a part man/part wolf (I believe we call it Wolf Man) state. The concept is easily the highlight of the story.
The rest of the werewolf lore is, to be kind, messy. An amulet that may or may not work. Characters struck with the curse reacting to moons in inexplicably different ways. Regular bullets take down a wolf man in the end. More importantly, however, is how slowly Nichols moves his story along. Wolf is a sluggish affair. It’s not a bad movie. It’s a slow one. Even its remarkable cast can’t seem to infuse it with any sustainable energy.
Pfeiffer plays Will’s love interest Laura…the daughter of his boss (played by Christopher Plummer). James Spader is Will’s two-faced colleague who is gunning for his job (and sleeps with his wife). Richard Jenkins pops up late in the movie as a police detective looking into a strange murder case connected to Will. But obviously, this is Nicholson’s movie. He makes interesting choices with the character. Choices that fit the slow burn of Nichols’ film. A fine job showing the concern of what his wolf nature gets up to at night. Not the most entertaining Jack performance to watch.
A large part of Wolf is spent dealing with a corporate jungle. Applying the animal inside of Will to a newfound ruthlessness at work is a great idea. It’s only so interesting to watch, however. Clever…and full of fine scenes for Nicholson to play. But this is a werewolf movie without nearly enough werewolf. The bigger issue is that the entire second half of the movie requires you to ignore where it is obviously going to work at all. Will bites Spader’s character…and we’re just supposed to forget that for a while.
When Will’s wife is found murdered (with canine DNA at the scene!) …it’s a pivotal moment in the story. Will fears that he killed her. Laura begins to suspect that he has. We know Spader’s Stewart did it. We saw Will bite Stewart. Any investment in Will and Laura’s reactions requires forgetting that until the movie brings it back up.
Even the transformations in Wolf are slow. Will has improved eyesight and superhero level smelling and hearing. Hair begins to grow. Frightened animals. The usual. Rick Baker ensures that the wolf man form of the character looks good. Though watching him leap around the woods is funnier than it is fun. The final form of the wolf looks pretty shoddy…but we only see it for a moment. Will goes to an expert for a lore dump. That scene introduces an interesting idea (a dying man wishing to be bitten) that never goes anywhere. There’s office politics to get to, after all.
Things culminate in a battle of the wolf men. Regular bullets take down Stewart. Apparently, that’s enough in Wolf. A final hint that Nichols might not have been all that interested in werewolves. It makes you wonder what he was interested in. Wolf has a romance that never really works…office drama that works somewhat better…and a werewolf story that only lands some of the time. It’s all perfectly watchable, of course. A quality director and a top-notch cast will do that. As a werewolf story, however, Wolf lacks bite.
Scare Value
Wolf never seems to decide if it’s a modern workplace drama or a classic monster movie. Nichols and company deliver quality work…but it’s inside of a slow-moving package. Nicholson makes the right choices for a good man stricken with a curse. Unfortunately, they aren’t the most entertaining choices for fans of werewolf movies hoping for wolf man Jack to cut a little bit loose. Gothic romance just doesn’t play well in a 90s boardroom.
2.5/5
Wolf Links
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