Review: War Dogs

Struggling to make more than a couple of bucks as a massage therapist and bed sheet salesman, Miles Teller now also must contend with a newly pregnant girlfriend (Ana de Armas). He eventually hooks up with a recently returned childhood friend turned arms dealer (played by Jonah Hill), picking up low-level government/military weapon contracts. Eventually the two stoners find themselves in Iraq selling guns to American soldiers, while also doing business with middle-man Bradley Cooper, who may or may not be an actual terrorist. Kevin Pollak plays a Jewish dry cleaner associate of the twenty-something stoners.

Here we have a perfect case where a subject has been dealt with in two darkly comedic films loosely based on (different) true stories, to wildly different results. One film, “Lord of War” was helmed by a legit (if erratic) filmmaker in Andrew Niccol and pretty much got it right. It was entertaining, but also didn’t entirely glorify the putrid arms dealing industry and genuinely had something to say. The other film is this sleazy 2016 flick from “Hangover” hack Todd Phillips, who along with his co-writers Stephen Chin (Larry Clark’s 1998 film “Another Day in Paradise”) and Jason Smilovic (screenwriter of “The Wrong Man”, AKA “Lucky Number Slevin”), proves to be the absolute wrong person to tackle such an important, serious subject even for the purposes of dark comedy. I’m nowhere near the morality police, but I kinda feel like this is the kind of film where you do need a bit of a moral compass to tell it right. I have massive problems with the premise here: A grown up stoner/slacker with meagre funds joins his more financially successful stoner pal in the arms dealing business. I feel icky about that. Very icky. Basically, this is the frat boy version of “Lord of War” with a wannabe “Scarface” bent (look at the copycat poster, let alone the use of a “Scarface” poster in the film), and while the main characters may indeed have had frat boy mentalities, Phillips never manages to convince me that things happened the way they do here. He also doesn’t convince me that he’s not on the side of the frat boy arms dealers either, to his shame. He has a history of glorifying disgusting frat boy behaviour, so he’s the exact opposite of being the right guy for this material (One of the real-life characters even has a cameo here!). Sure, Miles Teller and Jonah Hill are appropriately cast for what the film is under Phillips’ vision (Neither actor is sympathetic on screen, but I don’t generally find gun runners worthy of sympathy anyway), but it’s not an overly helpful film and didn’t personally appeal to me.

Early on I knew I was in trouble. We get some pretty amazing facts at the start of the film about the cost of military/warfare…and then we see Miles Teller (filling in for James Franco I guess) smoking dope. Damn it, I was not going to have much fun with this. The entire film plays like that, one almost clever bit quickly ruined by all the bongs and joints and frat boy mentality. Yeah, it’s sorta funny that Hill has a giant poster for “Scarface” on his wall, but then we cut to Hill and Teller smoking a bong to House of Pain. Later they do cocaine and go to a strip club. Oh joy. I did however love the bit where a guy playing guitar at a funeral home sings ‘Don’t Fear the Reaper’. That was funny, though I think it needed more cowbell. It’s also one of the least relevant scenes to the overall film, oddly enough. 10 minutes in and I was starting to feel unclean. A film on this subject really ought not have a frat boy/stoner vision. And like I said, if it’s true to the facts (and indeed the real guys were stoners), I wasn’t convinced it really happened like this. That’s important to remember. Just because something really happened, doesn’t mean I’ll necessarily find it convincing. I honestly felt like there was no way these callow idiot stoners could end up as gun runners without getting killed in minutes. Surely no one would want to deal with this twits as presented here. If I didn’t already know that it was a true story, I’d have guessed it was some “Fargo” bullshit where they just tacked on a ‘true story’ tag for a fictional film for…reasons. Since the film does indeed stick close to a lot of the facts (or at least as documented in this film’s source materials), I think the problem therefore comes from Phillips and the tone of the film, more than anything. He doesn’t make you believe that it’s legit, he’s too busy having the characters yuk it up.

I also found the soundtrack bizarre and extremely irritating. There’s a lot of great songs played, but seemingly randomly chosen. ‘Wish You Were Here’? Why? I love CCR but ‘Fortunate Son’ is not put to any constructive use here. Speaking of misuse, Ana De Armas is hotter than hell, but she’s given pittance to work with here as Teller’s naïve and eventually disapproving wife. It’s such a cliché of a stereotype that simply doesn’t feel true. As for Bradley Cooper, this is far from his best work to date but his cagey character suggests a better and more believable/serious film on this subject. Phillips doesn’t care, he just wants to make his frat boy stoner arms dealer movie for shits and giggles, and seemingly without any judgement whatsoever.

This isn’t a terrible film, and is clearly the film the director wanted to make. It’s just that the director/co-writer is himself miscast, and the film not convincing. It’s also not terribly interesting or appealing to me, but it’s not so worthless that no one will enjoy it. Someone will dig it, I mean a lot of people loved “The Wolf of Wall Street”, and that was a sleazy piece of shit (from a director who should’ve known better, I might add). At least this film isn’t that reprehensible. It’s a ‘true story’ I didn’t believe to be especially plausible, but if the idea of a movie about arms dealers from the director of “The Hangover” sounds appealing to you, you’ll probably like this one. Teller and Hill are perfectly cast, but to what end? It just didn’t do anything for me, your mileage may be different, especially if you actually liked “The Hangover”.

Rating: C-