War Dogs review: Miles Teller and Jonah Hill lead this enjoyable and extremely funny true story…
Our War Dogs review by Paul Heath, August 2016.
War Dogs is the latest film from Todd Phillips, the director of The Hangover trilogy, a series of films that thankfully came to an end back in 2013 after making a total of $1.4 billion worldwide. The last movie in that series is enough to make most cinema-goers to head for the proverbial hills when the mention of a new Phillips movie hits, but there’s one thing that you can’t deny this filmmaker for – his ability to execute a comedy. Here, Phillips turns to the likes of Scorsese or De Palma for inspiration and brings a very true story to screens, albeit mixed with his customary wit and laughs aplenty.
Jonah Hill and Miles Teller lead the cast of War Dogs, the latter playing male masseuse and wannabe bedding tycoon David Packouz. Packouz is living paycheck to paycheck, working the quality hotels of Miami Beach by day, and throwing profits into his new, seemingly futile business by night, all to make the rent and bills to support himself and his newly pregnant girlfriend. Times are indeed tough, that is indeed until Packouz runs into old school-friend Efraim Diveroli (Hill) at a local funeral. With Diveroli seemingly living the high-life, Packouz become more and more intrigued until they both end up working together brilliantly building on Diveroli’s flawless business model of bidding (and winning) small time military supply contracts. The two quickly move up the food chain in their new found partnership – gone are the one bedroom apartments, swapped for fast cars and luxury penthouse South Beach condos. When a massive $300 million contract becomes too good to pass up, the two venture from the U.S. to Florida to land the deal of the decade. What could possibly go wrong?
In short, War Dogs is great fun, Phillips showing maturity in his film-making and managing to get two fantastic performances from his two very watchable young actors. It’s Martin Scorsese-eque – kind of like The Wolf Of Wall Street meets Scarface – a two-hour long continuously humorous motion picture that will astound, baffle and delight in equal measure. Hill has never been better in his performance as the slightly wired gunrunner Diveroli, while Teller provides superb grounding as the steady, slightly more cautious Packouz. The two manage to remain extremely likeable despite their rather dubious and morally wrong antics, their performances never crossing the border into the ridiculous. An alumni of The Hangover series, Bradley Cooper, who also co-produces, also pops up in an extended cameo as the dangerous foreign arms dealer Henry Girard. He too, proves to be great fun.
While Phillips shows more depth with his latest, it’s far from perfect. It feels too easy-going an cartoony for its subject matter, and indeed makes light of very serious situations, both the film’s weakness, though also, strangely its strength. It’s hard not to like Phillips’ filmmaking style – one that we first got to witness with the harmless, though gross-out American Pie-esque Road Trip and the later Old School, a film that helped a certain Will Ferrell get noticed and put on the path to become one of Hollywood’s top comedic leading men.
Phillips has a talent in making the journey enjoyable, if not completely memorable, which is the much the case here.
War Dogs is definitely one of the better blockbusters in a summer of huge misfires and most will get a kick out of these proceedings, even if they do feel at least a bit guilty for doing so.
War Dogs review by Paul Heath, August 2016.
War Dogs is released in UK cinemas on Friday 26th August 2016.
