War Dogs (2016)
Directed by Todd Phillips
Based on the true story of two young men, David Packouz and Efraim Diveroli, who won a $300 million contract from the Pentagon to arm America's allies in Afghanistan.
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37 films that influenced War Dogs
What critics say influenced War Dogs
When War Dogs grows up, it really, really wants to be Goodfellas.
“War Dogs” plays like a movie made by someone who has spent a life in cinematic isolation, watching nothing but “The Big Short” and “Goodfellas” on a constant loop.
Then he’s looking up at the barrel of a loaded gun, and the screen freezes, “Goodfellas” style, and off we go with the flashbacks and the darkly comedic stuff set to classic rock tunes, and more freeze-frame moments used as devices for the narrator to introduce various colorful characters along the way.
A movie like War Dogs makes a pretty strong case that, outside of perhaps Pulp Fiction, no film from the last thirty years has been as influential—or just straight-up copied— as Goodfellas.
Okay, then: “War Dogs” is “Goodfellas,” but with none of that film’s pulse, anthropological detail or seductive immediacy: It’s “Whoa, dude-fellas.”
99 Homes, The Social Network, Scarface and Goodfellas are a few of the movies that have used this story in more interesting ways than War Dogs.
The aim, evidently, was to combine the brash racket of American Hustle with the cynicism of Lord of War .
Adapted from a “Rolling Stone” article called “Arms and the Dudes,” “War Dogs” is a familiarly giddy rise and fall saga that unfolds like a watered-down cross between “The Wolf of Wall Street” and “Lord of War” that’s been sprinkled with some of “The Social Network” for good measure.
Thanks to some great performances, “War Dogs” rises above similar themed films (for some reason, I kept thinking back to 1983’s “Deal of the Century” as well as 2005’s “Lord of War”).
It’s a far cry from “Lord of War,” Andrew Niccol’s scathing 2005 satire about an arms dealer played by Nicolas Cage.
There's definitely a joke to be made about the idea of Frank the Tank brokering an arms deal but, though there is no Will Ferrell cameo, War Dogs is caught somewhere between Nicolas Cage's Lord of War and the filmmaker's KY jelly wrestling brand of comedy; therein lies the problem.
Greed soon trumps reason and the fingerprints of The Big Short, American Hustle and The Wolf of Wall Street are evident in the storytelling style.
It never reaches the zany mayhem of “Pineapple Express,” the educational message approach of “The Big Short” or the revelatory magic of a Scorsese film.
There are moments when War Dogs approximates the effective politics-channelling comedy of The Big Short, with entertainingly presented facts and figures; Teller and Hill make for great screen buddies; and, bar the occasional lull, Phillips keeps the movie rattling along.
At times Phillips’ movie nods in the direction of Martin Scorsese’s nauseatingly brilliant “The Wolf of Wall Street,” in which Hill played a riotous second banana, as well as Adam McKay’s “The Big Short,” another example of a mainstream comedy director shifting gears and tackling a recent political outrage.
"War Dogs" seems to want to be everything from "The Social Network" to "The Big Short" and while it flirts with moments of greatness, the script just can't compete with the brains of those other films.
“War Dogs” plays like a movie made by someone who has spent a life in cinematic isolation, watching nothing but “The Big Short” and “Goodfellas” on a constant loop.
He has an automatic weapon in his trunk and a huge poster of Scarface’s Tony Montana dominating his office wall.
But he does enjoy the man's bottomless supply of drugs, is amused by his idol worship of Al Pacino's Scarface and is impressed by the money coming in from his sale of some equipment to the CIA, so he willingly becomes Efraim's tag-along accomplice when it seems the sky's the limit.
A genial con artist with a demonic chuckle and “Scarface”-fueled delusions of grandeur, Efraim heads up his own company, AEY Inc., and has already made a small killing peddling weapons to the U.S. military.
The audience has to care about someone after all, and it was never going to be Efraim, a schemer who fetishizes "Scarface," money, women and guns, and who goes from general creep to all out sociopath as the film progresses.
All it took for the Jonah Hill tour-de-force to finally materialize was a machine gun, a jones for Scarface and sleazy, smarmy bravado.
He calls his company AEY (which stands for nothing whatsoever), and he’s got a poster on his office wall of Al Pacino in “Scarface” in full machine-gun-spraying grimace.
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Thanks to some great performances, “War Dogs” rises above similar themed films (for some reason, I kept thinking back to 1983’s “Deal of the Century” as well as 2005’s “Lord of War”).
Greed soon trumps reason and the fingerprints of The Big Short, American Hustle and The Wolf of Wall Street are evident in the storytelling style.
Hill, who played a similar (but nonviolent) character in “The Wolf of Wall Street,” feels like the real deal here, down to his grating laughter.
At times Phillips’ movie nods in the direction of Martin Scorsese’s nauseatingly brilliant “The Wolf of Wall Street,” in which Hill played a riotous second banana, as well as Adam McKay’s “The Big Short,” another example of a mainstream comedy director shifting gears and tackling a recent political outrage.
The Wolf of Wall Street hinted at the great work Hill can do with the right antagonistic role, and War Dogs lets him steal the movie at gunpoint, going full wannabe gangster, shooting off his mouth or an AK-47 with equal precision.
His financial predator in The Wolf of Wall Street is a perfect portrait of rabid immorality.
The upshot is a sloppy hybrid of Michael Bay’s “ Pain & Gain ” and David O. Russell’s “Three Kings” with a heaping helping of missed opportunity.
The film does pull its punches slightly, by not having its lead characters go full evil à la Mark Wahlberg in the similar in tone Pain & Gain, but it still deserves credit for creating a world where no one has any moral scruples.
“War Dogs,” a true-story adaptation of twentysomething-bro gunrunners gaming the American government, attempts to meld manic energy and macho irresponsibility in the vivid, vibrant veins of “Pain & Gain,” “The Big Short,” “The Social Network,” “The Wolf of Wall Street” or “Lord of War.”
Of course, schemes can only last so long, and just like how Pain & Gain , The Big Short , and other true-catastrophe films evolve, War Dogs flies wildly out of control like a damaged Blackhawk caught in a tailspin.
But it turns out he doesn’t really need to worry; as much as it resembles other recent movies (especially Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street , Michael Bay’s Pain & Gain and Adam McKay’s The Big Short ), War Dogs stands pretty well on its own, deploying just enough comedy to entice the audience while treating the true story it’s based on with appropriate seriousness.
Phillips, making his equivalent of Adam McKay’s “The Big Short” mixed with Michael Bay’s “Pain & Gain” (and hoping, wishing, praying it could be his equivalent of Scorsese’s “Wolf of Wall Street”), conveys the complicated story by regularly freeze-framing the action and having David narrate.
"War Dogs" is vaguely reminiscent of another buddy film involving international dealings, "The Falcon and the Snowman" from 1985.
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The setup, narrated by Teller, echoes Goodfellas kind of the way the Monkees echoed A Hard Day’s Night.
It’s almost the same as a scene featuring Ben Affleck in Boiler Room – which is fine, because Affleck was doing Alec Baldwin in Glengarry Glen Ross .