War Dogs (2016) – Review

With Road Trip, Old School, Due Date, Starsky & Hutch and the Hangover movies director Todd Philips has gained a lot of expertise when it comes to comedies, specifically those full of crude humour. So you’d probably expect the same thing when it comes to his latest movie, War Dogs. Seeing Jonah Hill on the poster only seems to confirm so. But War Dogs is a movie which is based on a true story, so you’d think there would be no room for the tone of Philips typcial type of humour. Does he manage to tell this stroy in a convincing way?

David Packouz (Miles Teller) massages people in Miami. It’s a job he doesn’t want to keep doing and is trying to get a new business started, selling high quality sheets to elderly homes. Turns out that it is a tough sell. During a funeral he unexpectedly bumps into an old friend from his youth, named Efraim Diveroli (Jonah Hill). The two start talking and Efraim invites him to drop by. He’s running a company named AEY, which tries to win contracts with the American government to supply weapons. The army has such a high demand that the big companies don’t look at the deals where not a lot of money can be made. It’s exactly those opportunities which AEY takes advantage of. David decides to quite his job and start working at AEY. They quickly manage to be successful. The manage to grow their contacts and by doing so are able to try to bid for the better paying opportunities. They enter a bid for a contract which would be worth 300 million dollars. If they get it they can make a lot of money, but it would also mean taking huge risks which they might not be able to deal with.

 With this type of story you could make a movie similar to Lord of War. The two characters regularly clash, but Philips presents it with a light tone. Jonah Hill plays Efraim as a man sure of himself, not afraid of anything and a very funny laugh. Diveroli is obsessed by Scarface and it is something which keeps returning throughout the film. David is the protragonist the viewer is supposed to care for and therefore he feels more natural. Together they end up in various (dangerous) situations, but there’s always comedy to not make it feel as serious as it could have been. Whether that works for everyone who is watching this remains the question. There isn’t much depth, but War Dogs still is a movie that’s ok to watch.