"War Dogs: This isn't about being pro war, it's about being pro-money"
"Based on a true story"........very very very loosely.
A film with this subject matter probably should've been directed by someone else. This is a film about gun-runners and arms dealers during the Iraq War but told from the perspective of two college bro's. Director Todd Phillips of The Hangover Trilogy fame never really questions the moral or ethical dilemmas at hand, but instead focuses on our two protagonists landing "the big score", the big score being a $300 million dollar government arms deal.
Todd Phillips is in over his head trying to tackle an old school crime saga, he throws in classic rock songs, freeze frames with tiresome voice overs & title cards with the intention of giving this material a little more heft but fails miserably. There is so much blatant homage to the film Scarface with background posters and scenes of doing gratuitous amounts of cocaine that it's basically just the Diet Coke of Brian De Palma or Martin Scorsese light.
Personally if you want to see a film dealing with this subject matter that's handled with way more
austerity, then watch Andrew Niccol's "Lord of War" which actually satirizes war profiteers rather than glorifies them. The insurmountable problem is that David Packouz (Miles Teller) & Efraim Diveroli (Jonah Hill) are both pot-smoking losers, but they're both winners in the eyes of director Todd Phillips who can't seem to escape the pot-smoking crude humor film genre he's been stuck in for the last two decades.
There are no stand out performances in this film, Miles Teller barely has a heart beat, Jonah Hill is basically playing an extension of his character from "The Wolf of Wall Street" without the direction from Martin Scorsese and the cameo from Bradley Cooper merely exists, it could have been played by anyone. It's perfectly watchable because there is an occasional laugh stemming from Jonah Hill's cartoonish behavior, but it's just an overly polished attempt at telling a story about two stoners from Florida who accidentally become arms dealers.
Everything is surface level, it's all about the prestige, the money, the fame and the women but doesn't really ask the audience any hard hitting questions. Of course when things go south for our moronic duo the film expects you to feel sorry for them, but frankly I could give a fuck less. This Bradley Cooper & Todd Phillips production is plagued with bad writing and is easily forgettable. Save your money. 1.5/5
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