Both Too Close and Too Far

Rating: 6/10 (6 September 2016)

Blink and you'll miss it, but David Packouz, the real life AEY arms dealer responsible for defrauding the federal government, violating international law and being an all-around skuzz-bucket has a cameo in War Dogs. He plays a few bars from Blue Oyster Cult's "Don't Fear the Reaper" as Miles Teller (playing Packouz) tries to sell twenty boxes of Egyptian cotton bed sheets to a retirement home manager. In a nut shell, this little moment of quiet desperation is a microcosm for everything wrong with this film. It tries to hint at a larger point, and cakes itself with Goodfellas (1990)-level severity, but the affection director Todd Phillips seems to have for our dunderhead antiheroes, clouds the film's judgment like bleary pot smoke.
The true story of David Packouz and middle school chum turned business partner Efraim Diveroli (Hill) was first chronicled in Rolling Stone Magazine. The article and subsequent book written by Guy Lawson details the rise and fall of two twenty-something-year- old's who made a killing (figuratively) procuring guns and ammunition for the U.S. government. Hungry for larger and larger profits, the boys of AEY eventually got themselves caught selling substandard, antiquated and illegal arms to the Pentagon in a debacle known as the Afghanistan deal.
Packouz as portrayed by Miles Teller is a well-meaning yet interminably disenchanted young man who is picked up and corrupted by Diveroli and his psychopathic web of gun running schemes. He also provides the narration which acts less of an attempt to weave a mind process within context and more of a plea for sympathy and understanding. "When Efraim put it that way, there really was only one choice," he says in a pivotal moment. A moment that could have given the character some agency but instead continues to shift the blame to Efraim whom we all know is a bad person, he's got the nose for cocaine to prove it darn it!
Jonah Hill as Efraim for what it's worth, still comes across likable in a teddy bear meets Scarface (1983) kind of way. He does a lot in vital scenes to keep audiences rooting against him but there's something about his crass, school-yard bully distemper that feels like we're watching a parody of wise guy bravado instead of the real thing. This softens the image of a man who at best is a criminally minded megalomaniac and at worst is a killer (literally).
You'd think that in a film about guns there'd be more of them. Unfortunately most of the movie consists of car riding, cellphone talking and pale white faces staring at computer screens sifting through Pentagon orders. When guns do edge into the limelight, they're given a showy, spine-tingling, almost orgasmic quality; with the exception of the screwball Triangle of Death car chase that's highlighted in the trailer. They're basically treated as a triviality; a product meant to be bought and sold with our heroes never really handling them themselves. If guns were replaced by mortgage futures, you'd basically be watching a movie about the least interesting guys in The Big Short (2015).
War Dogs is simply too fond of its subject matter. It arms the story with a pugnacious worldview, sits in a shroud of gray and justifies itself by being comical but never satirical. Say what you will about the operatic peculiarities of Lord of War (2005), but at least it had the good sense to show you the consequences of run running on a visceral level. War Dogs by comparison is just confounding and trite. Todd Phillips is quite simply too giddy in this film to ask questions of any substance concerning Department of Defense contracts, weapons manufacturing, and the economy of war. Instead, like a college journalist getting his first big interview, he's simply out of his depth.