A dull movie with no new ideas

Rating: 3/10 (20 August 2016)

Miles Teller and Jonah Hill in a movie about international gun runners? Sign me up! Is what I was saying going into the film. Coming out was a different story. As is the story with many movies so far this year, 'War Dogs' is a boring mess of a movie. If you saw 'The infiltrator' or read my review you know I hated that film. And for the same reasons I hate that film, I hate this one. Except this one has the nerve to be nearly identical to the far superior 'Wolf Of Wall Street'. This movie hits all the same beats and story lines that Scorseses near masterpiece does. The difference between the two is that this one is neither funny nor entertaining to watch.
It is quite possibly one of the most dull, lifeless, boring films I have seen this year. Every time something funny or stressful could have happened it just cuts to another scene. Or, even more upsetting, ques up a voice over track from Teller. It blatantly skips over possible character building scenes in favor of out of place, lazy voice overs.
I don't think I would be lying when I say that there is more voice overs here than in 'Knight of Cups'. Which literally had not script. Why the choice was made to do this really comes down to laziness. There is no other reason to explain why it couldn't just let scenes play out. Not only was there countless voice overs that robbed scenes of tension, but it also did chapter kind of things.
Every twenty minutes or so a black screen with a sentence appeared on screen, describing what we were about to see. Just like the voice work, it didn't seem to have a point to it. It just felt like it didn't know how to transfer to the next scene so it threw in these random titles. They came from no where and served literally no purpose other than to tell you what was going to happen before it did.
But what was I expecting? Right from the first few scenes this film has jarring tones that clash with each other from scene to scene. The first shot of the movie is a tense scene involving a kidnapping and it cuts immediately to a stylized, scene with a pop song playing over top. It is a completely jarring tonal shift that is off and on through out the film. And, much like 'Suicide Squad' it has no idea how to place a song in a scene.
The songs it chooses are good on their own but, the scenes they are used in makes me hate them. All but maybe once were they used appropriately. It's sad that films have decided to just throw in pop songs to try and get a bigger audience instead of making a score that works in the film. It never helps the story move forward, they are all just kind of there.
That being said, nothing could have saved this story. As I said, it's exactly like 'Wolf of Wall Street'. But it's not near as fun nor does it have the interesting character study that 'Wall Street' has. It has Jonah Hill and Miles Teller furiously trying to make the dialogue they have sound organic. Yet, it's so poorly written that these Oscar worthy actors come across with little chemistry and sound like morons while doing it.
There isn't much that redeems this film. It's mostly well shot and these two performances aren't to bad. Other than that everything fails. It's poorly written, horribly boring, offers no interesting characters, and fails to deliver any comedic moments. It's one of those movies that thinks it's so much better than it is. It wants to be great and desperately tries to be but falls flat on its face.