War Dogs
Directed by: Todd Phillips
Written by: Stephen Chin and Todd Phillips & Jason Smilovic
Starring: Miles Teller, Jonah Hill, Ana de Armas, Bradley Cooper, Kevin Pollak, Patrick St. Esprit, Shaun Toub, JB Blanc, Gabriel Spahiu
Comedy/Drama/War - 114 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 16 Aug 2016
Written by: Stephen Chin and Todd Phillips & Jason Smilovic
Starring: Miles Teller, Jonah Hill, Ana de Armas, Bradley Cooper, Kevin Pollak, Patrick St. Esprit, Shaun Toub, JB Blanc, Gabriel Spahiu
Comedy/Drama/War - 114 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 16 Aug 2016
While Jeremy Renner was defusing IEDs in The Hurt Locker, Matt Damon was scouring for WMD in Green Zone, and Bradley Cooper was sniping the enemy out of existence in American Sniper, two poseurs in their early 20s were pretending to be professional arms dealers supplying the Pentagon with massive amounts of weaponry destined for the Iraq battlefield. The duo are the first to tell us they are not pro-war; they are pro-money. Why let the fat cats get fatter when all you need to secure a slice of the pie in the wild west days of Operation Iraqi Freedom was an internet connection and cell phone? Todd Phillips brings to life a ‘based on a true story’ tale of how ineptitude crossed with unchecked greed catapulted two Miami Beach stoners into wealth and success much further than they ever should have gotten.
Phillips is no stranger to grown men acting like juveniles making poor life choices. He directed Old School and the Hangover trilogy. Alongside producer Bradley Cooper, a Hangover alum and acting a small part in this film, War Dogs follows the stupefying stunts performed by two extremely pompous and entitled American Dream seekers including a bumbling foray into Iraq and haggling with infamous mercenaries in Albania. War Dogs is what happens when kids grow up on Scarface and consider it a documentary and dogmatic lesson plan to emulate.
Phillips is no stranger to grown men acting like juveniles making poor life choices. He directed Old School and the Hangover trilogy. Alongside producer Bradley Cooper, a Hangover alum and acting a small part in this film, War Dogs follows the stupefying stunts performed by two extremely pompous and entitled American Dream seekers including a bumbling foray into Iraq and haggling with infamous mercenaries in Albania. War Dogs is what happens when kids grow up on Scarface and consider it a documentary and dogmatic lesson plan to emulate.
After it finally became too much of a scandal for Dick Cheney to sole-source contract the entire war effort to his personal business cronies, the website FedBizOpps was born. This was the bureaucracy’s attempt to level the playing field and give the little guys a chance to outfit and supply the war machine. Efraim Diveroli (Jonah Hill, Hail, Caesar!) founded AEY Inc. as a name only corporation feeding on the crumbs of the procurement process; he bid on the projects too small for the big guys. However, while Efraim is the shameless lunatic most fun to watch, our narrator is his partner and best friend, David Packouz (Miles Teller, Allegiant).
David is the realistic example of what happens when you drop out of college after one semester. He scoots around Miami as a massage therapist and tries to hustle old folks homes into purchasing high quality bedsheets he bought in bulk but cannot unload. Disgusted by his employment prospects and with a baby on the way, David eagerly joins Efraim on an adventure which will take them around the world, shuttle them to the top of the Miami elite, and throttle them in front of pissed off Eastern European gangsters.
Loosely based on the escapades of Efraim and David, there are a couple additions to spice up the screenplay. Bradley Cooper (Joy) pops up as an amalgamation of a number of shadowy arms dealers who shepherds the kids on their biggest scheme, a $300 million bid known as ‘The Afghan Deal’. The U.S. military was looking to outfit the entire Afghan Army with AK-47s and ammunition, an incomprehensible maze of permits, regulations, and paperwork, and AEY Inc. was sure they could scam their way through the entire process. Another creation is Ralph Slutsky (Kevin Pollak), a Zionist dry cleaning magnate bankrolling AEY.
Making the most of his Warner Bros. budget, Phillips opted to shoot in as close to the actual locations as he could; Larry Sher, his directory of photography, also takes advantage of the natural light of these locales. There is glossy Miami Beach, sleazy Las Vegas, grey and stoic Romania moonlighting as Albania, and the scorching California desert posing as Iraq’s Anbar Province. Packing up a bunch of pistols and trucking them personally from Jordan into Iraq shows us just how smart our moronic heroes can be. Alluding back to why the two even end up being chased by Al Qaeda in Fallujah in the first place, Efraim leans out the window and yells, “I love Dick Cheney’s America!”
Teller must play the straight man and befuddled reactionary to Hill’s Tony Montana obsessed Efraim. As time goes on, Efraim ups the spray tanning, the slick-backed hair, and the Gucci apparel. Hill, channeling a bit of his Wolf of Wall Street cocaine-snorting buffoon of a character, walks off with War Dogs all by himself leaving nothing for Teller to do. It’s not that Teller is in over his head, Whiplash proved he is capable even though his noxious character in The Divergent Series does him no favors, but how can you act alongside Jonah Hill who invents his own diabolical laugh and owns the script’s best lines? While a bit too reliant on the whole fish out of water / “this is all so surreal” feeling of the story, War Dogs is a reliable dramatic comedy allowing the audience to enjoy the ride as we root for the inevitable downfall. Todd Phillips and company prove their point that the Iraq War was so unbelievable at times, it could spawn players such as Efraim and David.
