It follows a pair of childhood pals who miraculously become arms dealers and nab a $300 million contract from the USA government.
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A real-life story of two Miami friends who found military business opportunities during the Iraq war was “crazy” and “unbelievable” enough for actor Jonah Hill to star in the Hollywood big screen retelling. He had a better, if somewhat imperfect, sense of right and wrong and was starting a family with his pregnant girlfriend Iz (the stunning and incandescent Cuban actress Ana de Armas).
Capitalizing on a little-known military initiative allowing small contractors to supply American troops, Efraim Diveroli (an over-the-top Jonah Hill) and his childhood friend David Packouz (Miles Teller) start small and eventually grow their business into a multimillion dollar weapons enterprise.
Efraim and David are not too different, in fact, from the venerated founders of Facebook, as depicted in The Social Network – similar ideological conflicts abound: one is brutal in his pursuit of fulfillment of his company’s potential, and the other is cautious, even conservative.
Efraim Diveroli (Jonah Hill) and David Packouz (Miles Teller) go from some humorous sales of bed sheets for nursing homes to brokering a $300 million deal with the US Army for 100 million rounds for AK-47s.
I won’t lie, it was pretty awesome for a while.
This movie is trying so hard to be The Wolf of Wall Street but without any of the panache that story had.
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Efraim was a pathological liar and got away with what he did far longer than he should have only because the more-grounded David provided quasi-counterbalance. If you find foul language offensive, do not go to this movie because nearly every line of dialogue is laden with the F-bomb. His plan is to acquire guns from obscure corners of the globe and sell them to the United States army in the Middle East; to major corporations, the sale of a few hundred thousand Berettas is hardly worth pursuing, but to Efraim, these crumbs from the table are potentially worth a fortune. It’s why I’ve always loved gangster movies… movies where the guys with swagger win. By definition the term “war dogs” refers to “bottom feeders to make money off war without ever stepping foot on the battlefield”, and Efraim, a fast talking “Scarface” aficionado, lives up to the description. Efraim dismisses his concern – he says, “What I do is not pro-war, it is pro-money”. War Dogs, his latest odyssey of swearing, sex workers, and spreadsheets, probably isn’t going to change your mind either way, but it’s a damn good time if you’re picking up what Hill’s putting down. This is a look behind the scenes. Hangover fame director Todd Phillips is judiciously good in embedding wild feelings in the old school storytelling format. But it lacks any of the skewering social commentary of that film and instead tries to make us sympathetic for a pair of idiots who made a lot of money and then got arrested.
