Genre: Drama
Directed: Todd Phillips
Stars: Miles Teller, Jonah Hill, Ana de Armas, Kevin Pollak, Bradley Cooper, Gabriel Spahiu, Shaun Toub, JB Blanc, Julian Sergi, Dan Bilzerian, Patrick St. Esprit
Production: Warner Bros.
Blink and you'll miss it, but David Packouz, the real life AEY arms dealer responsible for defrauding the federal government, violating international law and being an all-around skuzz-bucket has a cameo in War Dogs. He plays a few bars from Blue Oyster Cult's "Don't Fear the Reaper" as Miles Teller (playing Packouz) tries to sell twenty boxes of Egyptian cotton bed sheets to a retirement home manager. In a nut shell, this little moment of quiet desperation is a microcosm for everything wrong with this film. It tries to hint at a larger point, and cakes itself with Goodfellas (1990)-level severity, but the affection director Todd Phillips seems to have for our dunderhead antiheroes, clouds the film's judgment like bleary pot smoke.
The real David PAckouz and Efraim Diveroli |
Packouz as portrayed by Miles Teller is a well-meaning yet interminably disenchanted young man who is picked up and corrupted by Diveroli and his psychopathic web of gun running schemes. He also provides the narration which acts less of an attempt to weave a mind process within context and more of a plea for sympathy and understanding. "When Efraim put it that way, there really was only one choice," he says in a pivotal moment. A moment that could have given the character some agency but instead continues to shift the blame to Efraim whom we all know is a bad person, he's got the nose for cocaine to prove it darn it!
See, he did nothing wrong, it was the other guy! |
You'd think that in a film about guns there'd be more of them. Unfortunately most of the movie consists of car riding, cellphone talking and pale white faces staring at computer screens sifting through Pentagon orders. When guns do edge into the limelight, they're given a showy, spine-tingling, almost orgasmic quality; with the exception of the screwball Triangle of Death car chase that's highlighted in the trailer. They're basically treated as a triviality; a product meant to be bought and sold with our heroes never really handling them themselves. If guns were replaced by mortgage futures, you'd basically be watching a movie about the least interesting guys in The Big Short (2015).
These guys... |
Final Grade: D+
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