WAR DOGS (2016)

Genre: Drama/Comedy
Director: Todd Phillips
Cast: Jonah Hill, Miles Teller, Ana de Armas, Bradley Cooper, Barry Livingston, Kevin Pollak, JB Blanc, Shaun Toub, Jeff Pierre
Runtime: 1 hr 54 mins
Rating: M18 (Coarse Language and Drug Use)
Released By: Warner Bros 
Official Website: https://www.facebook.com/WarDogsMovie/

Opening Day: 1 September 2016

Synopsis: “War Dogs” follows two friends in their early 20s (Hill and Teller) living in Miami Beach during the Iraq War who exploit a little-known government initiative that allows small businesses to bid on U.S. Military contracts. Starting small, they begin raking in big money and are living the high life. But the pair gets in over their heads when they land a 300 million dollar deal to arm the Afghan Military—a deal that puts them in business with some very shady people, not the least of which turns out to be the U.S. Government.

Movie Review:

‘War Dogs’ plays like Todd Phillips’ retort to critics who think that his creativity has stagnated since the first ‘Hangover’ movie seven years ago. Based on a 2011 Rolling Stones article about Efraim Diveroli and David Packouz, two small-time arms dealers who conned their way into a $298 million contract from the Pentagon and were eventually convicted of fraud, Phillips and his co-writers Stephen Chin and Jason Smilovic have fashioned a satirical comedy meant to amuse and trigger our outrage at how the Bush administration had basically placed its keys at the hands of shady personalities like Diveroli and Packouz as well as at the jerks who took the opportunity to profit from the Iraq War. At least that was the intention; the reality is a lot less respectable, and the reason why the movie is unfortunately getting more flak than acclaim.

For that, Phillips only has himself to blame. Oh yes, ‘War Dogs’ is perfectly watchable and rather entertaining in the same ‘bro-y’ way that ‘The Hangover’ trilogy and ‘Old School’ was – except that in this case, the pals Phillips is asking us to cheer on are a pair of gun runners. Instead of scolding it, Phillips seems to be celebrating their dubious money-making operation, what with scenes of the Miami pals getting high, getting drunk, fist-bumping each other while high and drunk and cruising around Miami in luxury cars with matching vanity plates that read ‘GUNS’ and ‘&AMMO’. Even for the purpose of cinematic joy, it is difficult to go with the flow of wallowing in seductive lethal excess from the profits of their morally challenged endeavor. What’s more, Phillips’ portrait of their rise-and-fall also appears to be holding them up as emblems of the American entrepreneurial spirit, when it should be incisive commentary of just how greed and corruption can turn American enterprise hideously awry.

That’s not to say there isn’t an enterprising slant in their rags-to-riches tale; indeed, before he runs into his old yeshiva classmate Efraim (Jonah Hill), David (Miles Teller) was no more than a massage therapist whose idea of selling high-end bedsheets to retirement homes turns out to be a business failure. It is Efraim who brings David into his small-time arms-dealing company he heads named AEY Inc, whose mode of operations involves scouring the government’s FedBizOpps listings for military contracts meant for the Iraq and Afghanisation occupations. It will be David who scores the company’s first major deal – to arm the Iraqi police with Italian-made Berettas, a seemingly simple enough contract that gets unexpectedly complicated when Italy bans arms shipments to Iraq. And it will be both Efraim and David who will therefore personally navigate the treacherous 500-mile road from Amman to Baghdad, unwittingly driving through the infamous ‘Triangle of Death’ in the process.

That instrumental change of fortune however is fabricated; oh yes, in adapting the real-life Diveroli and Packouz's tale for the big screen, Phillips and his co-writers have interlaced fact with fiction. Another important detail that’s also fiction is David’s girlfriend Iz (Ana de Armas), whom he lies up a storm to about his actual job and his actual whereabouts, and it is through Iz’s objections that Phillips seems to obligatorily reflect his story’s moral lessons. Of course, there are also the ostentatious title cards every now and then, which are meant to underscore the lessons of greed and turpitude – but each successive chapter further confirms that Phillips is too much in love with his on-screen ‘bros’, let alone deliver any lacerating insight on his two profiteers.

And that is even as we get to the core of the story – a highly coveted US$300 million deal to supply the US-backed Afghan National Army that they win by outbidding their bigger and more experienced competitors, one that gets them in business with a notorious weapons dealer named Henry Girard (Bradley Cooper) on a terrorist watch-list and which eventually does them in by their blatant act of fraud re-packaging Chinese ammunition to mask their country of origin on which there is an arms embargo. Phillips tries to paint David as a hapless young father dragged into the ethical quicksand of Efraim’s shady business in order to provide for his family, but David is short shrift as the audience surrogate, especially since he only comes to terms with his actions after being pummeled in a parking lot in Albania and having a gun pointed at his face.

It doesn’t help that Teller, who had reached a career high with ‘Whiplash’, is much too meek than his role demands. That is particularly so against Hill, who continues with his standout performance in ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’ with a brash, edgy and downright intimidating version of Efraim that steals every single scene he is in. Teller hardly matches his co-star’s game, and even the scenes of the couple enjoying the high life after making big on the Beretta deal display a somewhat lack of chemistry between the two actors. The soundtrack of mostly over-exposed classic rock tunes tries to compensate for the flagging energy especially in the second half where Teller has more screen time, but cannot quite mask the listlessness of a dark morality tale which should be much more compelling.

For many reasons therefore, ‘War Dogs’ is a missed opportunity. It is a missed opportunity at unravelling the morally ambiguous world of global arms dealing as well as its personalities. It is a missed opportunity for critique at the legacy of two wars that the United States is still grappling with the consequences of. It is lastly a missed opportunity for Phillips to prove that he can apply the lowbrow comic tradition of his previous movies to a much more serious, topical and grown-up subject. Oh yes, it’s telling that Phillips is in over his head, and his use of title cards and freeze frames remind us of the Scorsese’s movies that he is aping. That this is no ‘Wolf of Wall Street’ is given, just as this is no ‘The Big Short’ – and really, how much you enjoy this political comedy/ thriller depends on how much you are prepared to overlook the fact that the ethical questions that should be raised are simply glossed over. If you’re looking for a satire with bite, then you’ll find ‘War Dogs’ is simply just bark. 

Movie Rating:

(All bark and little bite - this satirical comedy of two gun-runner 'bros' misses the mark at being sharp political commentary, coming off no more than yet another variation of 'The Hangover')

Review by Gabriel Chong